Men's track and field prepare for invitationals

To get one last chance to qualify for the NCAA Championships, the IU men’s and women’s track and field teams will be sending athletes to Notre Dame, Ind., and
Fayetteville, Ark., this weekend.  

IU senior Scott Houston and the men’s and women’s distance medley relay teams are among those who are headed to Ntore Dame for the Alex Wilson Invitational. A pair of high jumpers, senior Emma Kimoto and junior Darius King, will travel south to Fayetteville due to the better high jumping facilities there.

Kimoto and King will be accompanied by IU Associate Head Coach Jeff Huntoon.
Huntoon said he thinks every athlete IU is sending has a chance to qualify.

“I wouldn’t put it past any or all of them to make it,” Huntoon said. “If (IU Coach Ron) Helmer didn’t think an athlete has the chance to go (to nationals), we wouldn’t bother putting you on the bus.”

Two interesting cases coming out of the Big Ten Championship meet involve Kimoto and Houston. Both won their conference championship, yet dropped out of the national qualifying ranks for their respective event.

“As soon as Scott got done, he was so happy about winning and I remember yelling across the track to him, ‘Hey, you’re not done yet,’” Huntoon said. “So I probably didn’t help him much with that.”

“But he and Emma Kimoto at least competed at the bar that will make it in for them. So they’ve seen what they have to do.”

The men’s distance medley relay is in a different position. That group is ranked second in the nation right now and is expected to at least qualify for a spot at the NCAA Championships.

They will be competing this weekend just to ensure 11 teams don’t pass them on the final weekend for qualifications.

With 26 teams entered in the event as of Tuesday morning, Helmer said he is not taking chances on that.

“We’ve finished second the past two years so it’s a no-brainer to get them in,” Helmer said. “At the end of the night the top 12 groups get to go, so we’ve got to protect our spot.”

IU graduate student Lance Roller, a member of that men’s DMR, will also compete in the 800-meter run.

Roller is in his last season of indoor eligibility and has no outdoor eligibility left from his days at University of Virginia, so he’ll be fighting for one more chance to compete on a national stage as a student.

“That might be part of the problem because you’re outside the normal training cycle without an outdoor season,” Helmer said. “When the clock’s ticking like that, it sometimes makes it worse because you start to press and try to make things happen
instead of just relaxing and trusting and letting it come to you.”

Helmer said his IU teams have had a lot of success in last-chance meets and he attributes that to the amount of races they run during the course of the season.

“We’re not a pep rally team,” Helmer said. “We compete a lot more than some people because we don’t want to get too emotional on that one day. If we just relax then we can use the intensity of the moment to pull out some really great performances.”