Track hosts Hoosier Hills Invite

The IU track and field teams have been hurdling past meets all year long and are finally able to see the finish line. They have only one more hurdle before the Big Ten championships, the Hoosier Hills Invite, this weekend.\nThe invite will be hosted by IU Friday afternoon in the Gladstein Fieldhouse, and will serve as a tune-up meet for the Hoosiers' top athletes.\nSenior hurdler and jumper Lorian Price is one of those top athletes. Price is ranked in the top five all time at IU in the long jump and the 60-meter hurdles. So far this season she holds the team's second-best time in the 60-meter hurdles at 8.48 seconds, set last weekend at Arkansas, and the best result in the long jump at 5.98 meters.\n"This will be a week to fine tune things," Price said. "And get everything ready for next weekend."\nIU coach Wayne Pate is having Price run what he calls an "off-event," which means instead of running in her specialty event, the 60-meter hurdles, Price will run in the 60-meter dash.\n"We have some people doing off-events instead of their specialty events," Pate said. "Lorian is running the 60-meter dash because it will help boost her speed."\nPrice said that she really wanted to work on her turnover -- increasing the speed of her strides -- this weekend. \n"This is all a part of peaking," Pate said. \nPeaking has been a common theme with the team since the beginning of the year. The goal for the season was to have all of the athletes perform their strongest in he conference championships.\n"We have been working hard all year," freshman hurdler Chris Sackmann said. "We have recently started to slow down our workouts so we can do the best we can."\nSackmann currently holds the best time for the 60-meter hurdles on the men's side. His personal best, 8.24 seconds, has been going down with almost every meet, now that practices have become less intensive. \n"This definitely has to be the time to peak," Price said. "I'm excited to go into the Big Tens. Things are starting to come together with the anticipation of next weekend and I am starting to peak."\nSackmann added that he is excited for his first Big Ten championships.\n"Last weekend in Arkansas we had a big meeting and the coaches all got us fired up for the meet," Sackmann said. "I can't wait to feel what that is like for the biggest meet of the season."\nThe biggest meet of the season, the conference championships, will be held in Bloomington for the men. Illinois will host the women.\n"We have a lot of athletes who are ranked high, and we know those athletes will be competitive," Pate said. "It's the second tier athletes that are right on the cusp, and need to perform well and take away points from other teams who are expecting to get them. The second line will decide how well we do"