Column: Qualifications await all-rookie team

I only knew of two things when I chose IU: the beautiful campus and the Little 500.
I viewed Little 500 week and the cyclists who rode in the race as the embodiment of IU spirit, as part of a tradition like no other and as a great source of pride for our school. I knew I wanted to be a part of that tradition.

This year, I was given the chance to start a Little 500 cycling team for my sorority, Theta Phi Alpha. But joining the Little 500 tradition involved a lot more than we, members of an all-rookie team, could have imagined. We survived Rookie Week and spring break training. Now we venture onto the next part of our journey: qualifications.  

On Saturday, all the prospective cycling teams will compete in a day-long event to see who will go on to the race. For an all-rookie team, it’s quite an eerie feeling. We have no veteran riders to guide us, so we’ve had to learn everything ourselves.

Our team members have learned so much in the past month that we want to do well, but no matter how prepared we are, anything can happen on the track. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Women’s Little 500, so it’s a big year for the women’s race, and riding in it during our first year would be a great honor.

For those who are unfamiliar with the event, a qualification run consists of a four-lap set on the 410-meter track with exchanges, or transferring the bike to the next rider, after each lap. It’s fast.

It’s scary, and for the many teams who do not qualify, it’s the last time the get on the track this season. If a team fails to complete a clean exchange within the 32-ft exchange zone, the attempt will be fouled, and the team will have another chance to qualify later in the day.

Being on an all-rookie team, we were unsure how to go about running quals. There is major strategy behind both the order of riders and who should ride in qualifications, as you do not have to ride in qualifications to actually be in the race.

My team chose to qualify three people from our team by having our fastest cyclist ride two non-consecutive laps to maximize our qualification placement and time.

Because we chose this strategy, I will not ride in quals Saturday, though I will ride in the race in April. Our qualification placement will reflect our starting position on race day, so qualifying high is very important.

If we qualify tomorrow, we have a lot of upcoming spring series events to look forward to, such as Time Trials, Miss-N-Out, Team Pursuit and, most importantly, the 25th running of the Women’s Little 500.

I am excited to be a part of this IU tradition and proud of the accomplishments the rest of my rookie team and I have made in cycling so far. This has been such an incredible journey, and I am so excited to watch our hard-working talents come out in quals. We have our Ferrari-red race bikes, each other, passion and our rookie luck, and now, we have come to quals.

­— kdrass@indiana.edu