Illini prepare to host Big Ten
meet
Team looking forward to more
competitive field at Big Ten indoor meet
by Nick Zahos
Daily Illini sports reporter
After winning last weekend’s Illinois
Women’s Invitational, the Illinois
women’s track team is looking to win their
third straight meet this Saturday at the Armory
Track.
In the final home indoor meet of the season, the
women will host the Carle-Health Alliance Illini
Classic.
The meet will field the largest amount of
competition for the Illini this season. Purdue,
Iowa State, Indiana State, Tennessee State and
the Indiana Invaders club team are expected to
compete.
Purdue, the defending Big Ten outdoor champions
and indoor runners-up, and Iowa State look to be
the toughest competition for the Illini.
“We expect the meet to be much more
competitive than the other two, on an
event-by-event basis,” said Illinois head
coach Gary Winckler.
With the Big Ten championships less than a month
away, Winckler said the Carle-Health Alliance
meet comes at the right time of the year for his
teams because it is usually very competitive.
Winckler said he has been pleased with the
progress his team has made so far, though he said
that the team, while doing well, is not yet ready
to compete at a Big Ten-championship level.
Winckler said that there is still time to
prepare.
“If we can continue to see the week-to-week
progress that we’ve seen over the last three
weeks, then I think we should be ready for the
Big Ten meet.”
Winckler said the team has many athletes starting
to emerge and believes that the team is on the
right track for success.
Junior Aleisha Latimer also said the team is
headed in the right direction.
“I think we have a lot of good young people,
and everybody is going to improve,” Latimer
said.
Several Illini are coming off good performances.
Latimer won the 200-meter dash, and senior Tara
Mendozza’s mile time of 4:45.68 was not only
a personal best, it was also good enough for a
provisional NCAA championship qualifying spot.
Senior Tisha Ponder won both the long jump and
triple jump events. Her distance in the triple
jump equaled a personal indoor best.
Graduate student Kerry Ann Richards recorded the
fourth fastest time in Illinois history in the
60-meter dash. |
 Lyndsey Dunnavan
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