The IU men’s track and field team has leaned on quality senior leadership this week in preparation for its first meet away from Bloomington this season.
The Hoosiers will travel to South Bend, Indiana, for the Meyo Invitational Friday and Saturday at Notre Dame, and although the team has benefited from excellent performances from younger athletes, IU Coach Ron Helmer said several weeks ago the upperclassmen are still the leaders in the locker room.
This is a crucial part of the season with the Big Ten Championships coming up in less than a month. Senior distance runner Jason Crist said the group traveling this weekend was selected for a reason.
“We aren’t taking a whole lot of guys,” Crist said. “The guys that are going have either been doing great things already or are guys that have been moving in the right direction.”
Crist is in his fifth year as a Hoosier, which has expanded his leadership abilities. He said the senior class is focused on showing the younger athletes how to do things the right way in terms of both preparation and racing.
“I feel like the seniors are definitely leaders,” Crist said. “You probably wouldn’t have guessed that based on the performances this track season because those young guys have been putting down some crazy marks, but we definitely try to be a motivational force.”
Fellow distance teammate and redshirt senior, Matthew Schwartzer said he also believes the seniors have a big role in leading and developing this team. Schwartzer is among the group that Helmer has decided to rest for this upcoming meet.
“I think we do a great job of setting the right example, whether it be in practice or more importantly, outside of practice during recovery,” Schwartzer said.
Schwartzer said recovering after races is the most important part of the season. He said he always makes sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to in order to correctly recover.
Crist said the diversity of the seniors has helped them connect with more of their teammates than they would if each had a similar personality and style.
“The cool thing about our class is that everyone is different and everyone has their own different style of leadership,” Crist said. “For me personally, I’m not a very vocal guy so I tend to lead more by example. Other guys are more vocal than I am, but I like to show guys things on a person-by-person basis.”
Crist said the main thing Helmer stressed to the team this week was relaxation. Other Big Ten athletes put together strong performances during the weekend, but Crist said his coach told the team not to panic.
This meet should feature plenty of quality competition because a number of top schools were invited. Helmer said fewer of his athletes will be competing this weekend than usual.
“There are a good number of people that aren’t going,” Helmer said. “We are going to rest a few people and some people just won’t make the cut to go on the bus.”
Helmer said he recognized the opposing performances but emphasized his team must not worry about them and just focus on the upcoming competition.
“It’s no longer we need to get in work, we need to get in more races or we need experience,” Helmer said. “Now we can start putting some really solid times on the board. We’ve had some people put NCAA qualifying marks on the board and we expect more of those.”
In order to put up these kind of marks, Helmer said the team has to focus more on what they are doing to get better and less of what results other competitors are scoring.
“What I encouraged them to do yesterday is to make sure that we continue taking care of ourselves,” Helmer said. “We need very much to concentrate on ourselves and to make sure we are at our very best.”
