Let the races begin

A mess of tricycles, costumes and loud music converged in Assembly Hall Thursday night as the Mini 500 kicked off Little 500 weekend.\n"Tonight came together well," said senior Jayme Jones, IU Student Foundation Steering Committee member. "Everyone worked really hard. I'm excited with how it came out."\nThe competition began with Ashton Annihilators in the lead in the women's division, Delta Chi in the men's and Collins Catastrophies in the co-ed group. But none of those teams finished the night with the top spot.\nThe race reached a climax when a controversial call in the men's division declared Sigma Chi the winners. The close call forced an extra race to determine the winner.\nDelta Chi, Sigma Chi and Delta Sigma Pi made it to the final round for the men, but the race was really between Sigma Chi and Delta Chi. Both teams stayed neck and neck, until Delta Chi, the lead men's team going into the event, was disqualified twice for illegal riding.\n"As their coach, I say this is a travesty to the institution," junior Steve Lo said. "It's an outrage. We've been training year-round, and it was totally unfair."\nThe Sigma Chi team -- senior Chris Mansfield, junior Corey Mosher, senior Jack Donaldson and senior Trent Hahn -- didn't qualify during the preseason because of personal reasons in the house. But the team, which won the event last year, bounced back, giving it two consecutive titles.\n"The race was awesome," Mansfield said. "But I'm not surprised we won, because we are returning champions. It's a pretty good feeling."\nThe rest of the races were not quite as eventful, but had upsets of their own.\nHeading into the women's race, Ashton, which won the event last year and led all of the women's teams in qualifications, was expected to win. But the Evans Scholars Caddy Girls came away with the victory.\n"This is great," said senior Shannon Hoffman of Caddy Girls. "Ashton had the best qualifying time coming into tonight, so we made that our goal. We wanted to beat them. This is great."\nCollins Catastrophies were leading the co-ed division, when Delta Sigma Pi knocked them out in the semi-round.\nCBGBs emerged from the No. 14 spot to take home the trophy, coming from second-to-last position to win the race on a night filled with hoopla. \nThe race kicked off with excitement as the teams made their entrances into the balloon-filled, crazed gym. A poster hung at the front of the gym with a Harley Davidson logo and the "Live to trike, trike to live" logo stenciled on it.\nBut the costumes stole the show.\nDelta Chi showed up in women's dresses, and Delta Zeta wore men's suits. Lambda Chi Alpha showed up with its shirts on backward and continued the theme by racing backward.\nFormer basketball coach "Bob Knight" reappeared, escorted by Alpha Sigma Phi members, who posed as Texas Tech basketball players.\n"Overall, the participants were not too rowdy," Jones said. "The Mini 500 is a great kickoff event for the Little 500, because it gets everyone in the spirit of the weekend. It's such a fun event"