Marquette Track & Field Travels To Iowa Invitational
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field
April 18, 2008
MILWAUKEE - The Marquette University track and field team will travel this weekend to compete in the Iowa Invitational. The meet will be hosted by the University of Iowa, and will take place Saturday at the Francis X. Cretzmeyer Track in Iowa City, Iowa. Field events are scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., followed by running events with a start time of 1:15 p.m.
"We're looking forward to getting the full team back into competition after having just a small group go last weekend [to the Lee Calhoun Memorial] and the majority of the team having the weekend off," said head track and field coach Bert Rogers. "Practice this week has been going really, really well. We're just really looking forward to improving some BIG EAST qualifiers and potentially getting a couple more regional qualifiers."
Since the Lee Calhoun Memorial meet last weekend, 26 Golden Eagles have qualified for the 2008 BIG EAST Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Five MU student-athletes have had regional qualifying marks.
Bradley, Drake, Illinois-Chicago, Iowa State, Northern Iowa, South Dakota State, Western Illinois, and Wisconsin will join the University of Iowa and Marquette in a competitive weekend.
"I've already got the heat sheets of who's going to be in what and it's going to be a fairly compact meet, but very good. Each heat of everything is going to be solid and competitive and that's exactly what we want," said Rogers. "We don't want to go to a meet that's really long and drawn out but have something that can be done in a couple of hours but the competition's going to be really good."
The Golden Eagles hope to build on recent momentum from being able to practice outside as of late. Outdoor practices have been hindered by the Midwest weather.
"When we're able to get nice weather and get on the track and put down some good practices, it definitely translates better to the weekend competition," Rogers said. "The early spring can offer some hurdles for us to go over in terms of getting good training outside and when we have nice days we definitely take advantage of it and luckily we've had a nice week this week."