Indoor track starts season at Iowa St.

by Jenni Niemiec

Staff Writer

Grinnell has always had successful and competitive track teams, and this year should be no exception. Both teams are ready to open the season in full stride, and, as always, are looking to improve on last year’ successful campaign.

The men’s and women’s track teams are heading to Buena Vista this weekend for their second meet of the season. It will be a big and fairly important meet with good competition, though only about half of each team’s members will be competing. The rest of the team will continue training in Grinnell until the entire team is ready to compete in every event.

“It’s our first meet, and a lot of people are still getting into shape for competition,” explained Liz Jarvis ’04.

For the men, third-place finishers indoors at conference a year ago, it’s the same story; a powerful team of long-distance runners coupled with a capable, promising sprinters’ corps trying to keep pace.

“Our strength, as always, will be in the distance events,” said head coach Will Freeman of this weekend‘s upcoming competition.

He is expecting Mitch Herz ‘05, Justin Riley ’06 and Adam Beals ‘06, among others, to run some extremely good times.

Last weekend, the team competed at Iowa State and put up some impressive times. Pat Knoedler ‘03 ran a 50.77 in the 400m, good for third overall in Grinnell Indoor Track history. Yaw Nti-Addae ‘04 ran the 60m in 7.33 seconds, and Herz and Tom Beaudin ‘03 both ran the 3k with good early-season times (9:09 and 9:21 respectively).

On the women’s side, Grinnell is looking to improve on last season’s impressive fourth place finish at conference. Grinnell will have to do so without All-American Nicole Cueno ’02, who graduated, but likes their chances nonetheless.

“So far training is going well,” said Jarvis. “The distance runners have been training outside as much as possible despite the cold and really working hard. The greatest aspect of our team is definitely the unity and support we give each other. We are proud to be women beasts!”