Kappa reigns in record time

It's hard to improve upon winning the pole position and the Little 500 in 2004, but Kappa Kappa Gamma already managed to find a way.\nSaturday, Kappa seized the pole position again, but this time they proceeded to set the track record in the process.\n"It wasn't perfect," said senior Kelsey Cooper. "We bobbled our exchanges a little bit, but with things like that, you just have to think that if we would have gone any faster we could have wrecked."\nAs Kappa took the track before their record-breaking run, Delta Gamma was just walking off it with heads held high. \nAfter wrecking in their first attempt, Delta Gamma surprised everyone -- even themselves -- by grabbing the pole position. With a large crowd cheering the team on, Delta Gamma jumped into each other's arms and screamed as though they had just won the actual race.\n"When our last rider crossed the finish line we all looked up, and we knew we had a good run, but we were just overjoyed," said sophomore Libby Hipla.\nDelta Gamma qualified in 14th last year and finished the race in sixth position. This year's team has the intensity needed to improve upon that finish, Hipla said.\n"We knew that we had solid returning riders, and myself included, we had really strong rookies," Hipla said. "We were focused from January that we were going to do well."\nRounding out the rest of the top two rows will be Alpha Chi Omega in the third spot, followed by Alpha Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta and last year's runner-up, Teter Cycling. After finishing third last year, Theta nearly avoided disaster after botched exchanges in each of their first two runs.\nTeams like Theta, Teter and Kappa all benefited from a solid core of experienced leaders. Even a team like Delta Gamma sports two returning riders. But for the first-timers among those teams, nothing tops their first real taste of Little 500 action.\n"Being an athlete and a competitor by nature, it is a totally different feeling," Hipla said. "You all come together for one goal and it's really exciting when you do something great like (take the poll)."\nThe pole position gets the glory, but in reality, it's anywhere among the top two rows that is the really sought after position, Kappa senior Meredith Horner said.\n"It's nice being up front in case of a wreck in the beginning," she said.\nIndividual time trials are the next event on the docket and will be held Wednesday.\n-- Contact Sports Editor Brian Janosch at bjanosch@indiana.edu.