Hoosier Hills Invitational keeps IU at home

In their final meet before the Big Ten Indoor Championships, the IU men’s and women’s track and field teams will host the Hoosier Hills Invitational Friday and Saturday.

The Hoosiers will take next weekend off to prepare for the conference meet, so this weekend is the last chance the athletes have to get in a good seed time.

Hoosier Hills, which is also the team’s indoor home finale, will be the first look at IU’s distance medley relay team (DMR). At this meet last year, the Hoosier men ran the world’s fifth-fastest indoor DMR of all time.

Sophomore Rorey Hunter will lead off this year’s relay with the 1200-meter leg. He’ll pass the baton to fellow sophomore Nick Stoner for the 400-meter run. Graduate student Lance Roller will then run the 800-meter portion and finally senior Andy Bayer will anchor with a 1600-meter run.

“The goal is just to put up a time good enough that we think will make it into the NCAA meet,” Bayer said. “We have a lot of really good legs so I’m hoping to get the baton and not have to do too much.”

Bayer, who will also be competing in the men’s 3,000-meter invitational race, is an NCAA outdoor champion in the 1500-meter run who has been plagued by bad luck so far this season. Getting sick before the Indiana Relays hasn’t helped him recover smoothly from his injury.

Bayer said he was pleased with his mile time last weekend at the Meyo Invitational and said he’s gotten a good week of work in leading up to Hoosier Hills, so all signs point to a good meet.

On the women’s side, the high jumpers and pole vaulters will look to carry some momentum from last weekend into this meet. Senior Emma Kimoto and freshmen Sophie Gutermuth and Sydney Clute all performed well at Notre Dame and are scheduled to compete in their events this week as well.

IU Coach Ron Helmer said the overall goals of this meet are to tune some things up before championship season and to get some qualifying marks for the NCAA Indoor Championships in early March.

“You get to this point in the season and this is where you finally see your hard work pay off,” Helmer said. “It needs to happen because they want it to happen. It’s up to us to give them the opportunity and it’s up to them to take it.”

While this meet might not be as large in scale as some of the other meets the Hoosiers have hosted, Helmer said it’s equally important, if not more. Because many athletes won’t compete at the last-chance Alex Wilson Invitational after the conference championship, Hoosier Hills will be one of the final opportunities to qualify for the national championship meet.

“If they’re good enough and they’re ready, it will happen,” Helmer said. “We still have a lot of business to take care of, so it’s not time to shut down and rest quite yet.”