Track teams spend Little 500 weekend in Louisville at meet

Originally, the IU track-and-field teams had the Little 500 weekend off. But when the Indiana Relays were canceled April 7 due to bad weather, their coaches added this weekend’s Cardinal Invitational to their schedule.\nThe meet will be Friday and Saturday at the University of Louisville’s Cardinal Park.\nThe coaches of IU track and field hope their squads compete aggressively this weekend at the open invitational and gather more individual regional qualifying times.\nOne way the coaches are encouraging this is by unofficially scoring the meet. That means the coaches of the Louisville Cardinals and the Indiana State Sycamores will keep score as if the meet were a team meet, not a normal open meet.\n“The Cardinal Invite is an open meet, so it brings in random athletes to compete,” IU sprinters coach George Freeman said. “What we want to do is keep score between the Cardinals, us and the Sycamores. Our athletes always compete better when the meet is scored – this one will be scored, but not officially.”\nAccording to the coaches, if the meet were scored and the results turned into the NCAA making them official, athletes who have been redshirted or who are just not using eligibility – running unattached – for their teams would not be allowed to compete.\n“In track and field, you can’t have unattached athletes scored in meets, because that would lose their eligibility for the year,” IU women’s interim head coach Judy Wilson said. “It helps the competition when you have unattached athletes compete – for example, post-collegiate athletes.”\nFreeman hopes that with the level of competition and the fact the meet will be scored will make his athletes perform better. So he is taking nearly all his sprinters to this away meet, something the teams normally do not do.\n“We have roughly a full team going,” Freeman said. “We’re looking at leaving only four out of 19 sprinters.”\nTwo of Freeman’s sprinters who won’t be making the trip are sophomore Wil Glover and junior Doug Dayhoff. Both are nursing minor injuries. To cope with their losses, Freeman plans to move sophomore John Gunnell into Dayhoff’s leg of the 4x100-meter relay squad, and will possibly bring two-sport athlete Marcus Thigpen into the meet to take over Glover’s races.\nThe men’s sprinting squad has yet to have an athlete qualify for the regional meet in late May, but Freeman hopes this weekend could change that.\n“I’ve worked them so hard, but now we have been doing more things on speed and I have pulled them out of the weight room,” Freeman said. “Now that it’s warm out, they will run faster, because sprinters need heat. It was only 40 degrees in Missouri, and there is no way you can run fast in that.”\nThe women’s team is also hoping to capitalize on the warm weather and get more regional qualifications, Wilson said. They are planning on taking a nearly full squad as well, with 25 or 26 athletes traveling.\n“We are hoping to get warm weather and more people qualified for regionals,” Wilson said. “Last weekend was great getting to see where the regional meet will be held, and this weekend will be good training for next weekend’s Drake Relays, where we are hoping to face really strong competition.”