For the first four weeks of the season, IU competed in road meets. IU will be competing in their first home meet of the season Saturday in a dual meet against Purdue.
The meet starts at 4:00 Saturday afternoon at the Robert C. Haugh Track & Field Complex with the hammer throw.
IU Coach Ron Helmer said it’s nice to finally be home this weekend. Sophomore distance runner Brenna Calder said she is looking forward to a big crowd.
“I like running at our home track,” Calder said. “We run here all the time, so it’s a big amount of comfort.”
Saturday will not be the first time the Hoosiers and Boilermakers have seen each other this season. Both schools competed at the Big Ten-ACC Challenge last week. IU’s women’s team finished ahead of Purdue’s women’s team, while Purdue’s men’s team finished ahead of IU’s men’s team. Both the men’s and women’s teams for IU finished in second overall.
Helmer said he isn’t putting too much stock in the head-to-head results from last week. He said neither Purdue nor IU entered its athletes in ways that would maximize their point-scoring capabilities. But Helmer did see something noteworthy last weekend from the Boilermakers.
“What Purdue did show us is that they have some places where they have the ability to shut us out of the top three,” Helmer said. “If they start doing that too many times, we’ll be in trouble.”
However, Helmer said he puts plenty of stock in the individual results his team produced last week. He said while he was extremely pleased with a big group of athletes, he was equally disappointed that group wasn’t bigger.
“What we observed as coaches was that those athletes that were good were, in most cases, really good, and those athletes that weren’t real good, in most cases, weren’t good at all,” Helmer said. “Hopefully, a number of them can right the ship and still not give up on what starts to be a really long year.”
Calder was a big part of the group that succeeded last weekend, because she ran the sixth-fastest 1,500 meter in school history. She has been consistently solid this season, and the coaching staff has recognized that. Calder said she attributes that consistency to her open-minded and calm mentality heading into races.
Calder has also been a catalyst for the distance runners, who have achieved high marks all season long. Senior distance runner Rorey Hunter credited the squad’s positivity in workouts for their successes on race days.
“I think we’re all just keeping our mouths shut and working hard,” Hunter said. “We’re all just feeding off each other and bringing success to each other.”
