Track travels to Big Ten Championships

This is the start of the moment the IU Track and Field team has been waiting for all season.

With all of the marks and times established during the regular season, the teams head to Columbus, Ohio Friday for the three-day Big Ten Outdoor Championships.

The men’s team finished third at the Championships last year. It has three defending champions returning this year from last year’s competition.

Senior Derek Drouin won the high jump and is favored to win the event again this year. He is an Olympic bronze medalist in the event and has won the NCAA Championship four times, including his indoor titles.

Drouin will also be competing in the javelin throw, where he scored a point last year for the Hoosiers by finishing eighth.

“Derek is Derek,” Assistant Coach for Throws Jermaine Jones said in a video on IUHoosiers.com. “He’s a world-class athlete so he can kind of come on the runway and I can pretty much know that he’s going to throw 185, 190 feet any day of the week. That’s pretty consistent. If that holds true, that should score this year.”

Senior Zach Mayhew won the first 10,000-meter Big Ten Championship in school history at last year’s Big Ten Outdoor Championship. He will be looking to defend his title again this year.

Senior Andy Bayer will try to win one more Big Ten Championship before his career comes to a close. Bayer not only won the Big Ten Outdoor Championship in the 1,500-meter race, but he also won the NCAA Championship. He will also try to defend his title again.

The men have not won the overall team championship since 1991.

The women look to improve upon last year’s 10th place finish.

Junior Kyla Buckley won the Big Ten Indoor Championship in the shot put earlier this season. Now she will try to add an outdoor crown.

“If she comes and competes, we’ll be okay,” Jones said. “That’s what I told her. This weekend is not about marks. The meets leading up to now are about getting the marks that you need to receive. But Big Tens and moving into the regional meet is just about beating as many people as you can possibly beat.”

Senior Emma Kimoto has the Big Ten lead in the high jump this year. She cleared 1.83-meters at the Polytan Invitational April 20, a school record.

Another area where the Hoosiers could do some damage is in the pole vault. Freshmen Syndey Clute and Sophie Gutermuth have both had success on the women’s side, as has senior Derek Messmer on the men’s side.

Assistant Coach for Pole Vault coach Jake Wiseman said the competition among all the pole vaulters has helped the team push each other this year.

“They’re all here to win,” Wiseman said in a video on IUHoosiers.com. “I told them, ‘I don’t care who wins as long as someone in an IU jersey does.’ They have stepped up to the challenge many times this year. I don’t know if we’ve hit the big bars that we’ve really got our goals set to, but I think it’s coming. I think it’s coming for a lot of them.”