Track & Field

Nico Perrino

I first want to apologize for not blogging yesterday. I was trying to lay low the day before my competition, so after going to the track in the morning to do a pre-meet shakeout I pretty much just came back to the hotel and did nothing.

Today however is a different story. The team woke up early for our team meeting at 9am to go over some logistics for the day, and to recap where we are at as a team. The meeting only lasted about fifteen minutes, so when it was over I went back to sleep for a couple hours before I had to get ready to catch a 1:30 bus over to the track from the hotel.

Our hotel is out in the middle of nowhere. The only things that surround us are commercial office buildings, and if you look out from the front of the hotel you can see a big Budweiser manufacturing plant in the distance, that’s it. I guess this is where the visiting football teams stay (understandably far away from campus) when they come to Columbus to play Ohio State, because when we showed up to check in an IU football helmet was sitting on the concierge desk, and I don’t think you can get those things anywhere on the Internet.

The hotel is so far removed from campus, that it takes a 20-minute bus ride down a highway to get to the track; apparently all the closer hotels were booked up by teams that were a little more on the ball and booked way ahead of time. Plus, it’s hard to find a hotel that can accommodate about 75 athletes and coaches on a given weekend.

I don’t know how many of you reading this are familiar with how collegiate track teams operate during meets, but it goes something like this: You have 50-60 or so athletes (men’s and women’s teams combined) and each event starts at different times of the day. Events in track and field can be so spread apart, that one may start at 9am and another may start at 10pm, so they are all over the place. So, needless to say, you don’t bring the whole team to the track at once. You shuttle over the first few events in one bus, then an hour or so later you shuttle the next few events over, and you repeat that process all day.

So the IU team had buses going back and forth all day to and from the track (not to mention to and from food because food it is not within walking distance from the hotel). Like I said I took the 1:30 bus and got to the track about when all the main events were just about to get started (The decathlon had been going on since about 9:30am).

Some highlights for our team were Kiwon Lawson (a sixth year senior; long story) and Cedric Hudson (Freshman) getting first and second in the long jump, respectively. Also, our freshman high jumper, Derek Drouin, who happens to be from Canada, won the high jump. De’sean Turner got second in the Steeple Chase, and at the end of the second day IU ended up with 41 team points, enough to put us in second in the overall team standings going into tomorrow’s finals.

Some other things to note that particularly impressed me on the second day of the championships were first off the amount of guys running under 47 seconds in the 400 prelims.  This year’s prelims in the 400 were HOT! Murdaugh, a freshman from Ohio State, is coming out of prelims with the fastest overall time at 46.45, followed by Masheto, an Olympian from Illinois, who ran 49.50. The sheer number of guys breaking 47 in the prelims today set up tomorrow’s final as one of the premier events of the day on the track. I’m picking Masheto to win, although I have been impressed with how Murdaugh is running lately, especially as a freshman, look for him to do some incredible things in the future.

The high jump bar was, well, set pretty high today in what amounted to a pretty impressive showing. What would have gotten you first place last year in the High Jump at this same meet got you 8th in this year’s meet.  The winning jump of around 7 feet 2 inches was jumped by two individuals, but it was the IU freshman, Drouin, who came out on top due to misses. Also look for Drouin to have a very successful collegiate career. After amassing an impressive list of accomplishments in his first year on the scene, including a second place indoor finish at the NCAA championship meet, Drouin is on his way to finishing a very solid freshman year in track and field.

Overall, the first real long day of competition went off well.  Other than a strong wind, the weather held off until the 800-meter run at about 5pm when it started to rain. Tomorrow looks to be much of the same, overcast but much much cooler. Events start tomorrow at 10:30am with the Men’s pole vault, and go until 3:45pm with the Men’s 4×400 final. Live results can be found at:  http://www.deltatiming.com/results/meet.aspx?yf=2009&mf=big10_outdoor

Also, after the second day, here are your full team scores going into Sunday, with Minnesota looking good on both sides:

2009 Big 10 Champsionships - 5/15/2009 to 5/17/2009
Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, Columbus, OH
Team Rankings - Through Event 42

Female Team Scores