Tomorrow, the men’s and women’s track teams will host twelve other schools at the Denault Invitational, their last regular season meet. So far this year, both teams have produced identical stellar results, placing second at the Penn State meet, first in the Cornell five-way, first in the Harvard/Brown meet, first against Army and Yale, and sixth overall at the extremely competitive Penn State Invitational. The Red men and women will look to extend their winning streaks this weekend but also have their sights on Heps next week.
“The competition this weekend will be from smaller, not incredible schools,” said women’s head coach Lou Duesing, “But we’re still going to run it like any other race. All of our athletes will go all out because this is a chance to enhance our Heps performances and chances.”
Both the men’s and women’s teams realize that the competition in this meet will probably not be as stiff as either team has seen all season. Nonetheless, every athlete knows that it is a chance to fine tune and improve performances for the last time before the Heptagonal championships.
However, to reduce the risk of injury and mix up the usual routine, some athletes will not compete and others will compete in different events.
“We’re going to rest some of our long distance runners this weekend,” said Duesing. “They’ve put in the mileage all season, and this weekend they really can’t do anything else.”
Duesing also commented on the philosophy behind mixing up events.
“We want to put people in events that will help their Heps performance. That means that if we want to improve our middle distance runners’ stamina, we might put them in a longer event, or if we want to work on speed, a shorter one,” he said.
With indoor Heps championships a strong possibility for both the Red men and women, neither team wants to risk losing an athlete only one week before the meet.
Archived article by Everett Hullverson