Kappa Alpha Theta cyclists eager to build on strong performances during Saturday’s series event

For junior Ali McCormick and her Kappa Alpha Theta teammates, being the best isn’t a goal. It’s their only option. \nBut the women who call Woodlawn home haven’t crossed the finish line first at the Little 500 since 2003. It’s the longest streak for the four-time champs since 1999, when the women failed to win in their fourth consecutive race.\nMcCormick and Theta’s veteran group of riders have aspirations to change that statistic. They will continue what they hope is their ascension to the top at Miss-n-Out this Saturday at Bill Armstrong Stadium.\n“Our entire team has goals to be the best and be at the top,” McCormick said after her individual time trial. “Theta has a lot of tradition. We’ve worked incredibly hard, so we expect to be at the top every time.”\nThe team qualified fourth for this year’s race, and its four top riders all placed in the top 35 at the Individual Time Trials – one of the best marks of all the teams competing. \nThe girls from Theta are using these series events, including Miss-n-Out, as a chance to reignite their competitive spirit.\n“It puts the fire under your belt,” McCormick said about the series events. “It’s going to make you work harder. We have someone who just set a track record and we don’t want that to happen race day so, we’ll be there at the end. It just makes you work harder.”\nBut the Theta women aren’t the only ones hoping to build on past Little 500 successes. Defending-champion Kappa Kappa Gamma qualified 12th for the race, which is its worst qualification since 1990 when it also qualified 12th.\nBut as junior Kappa rider Anna Gartner knows, qualification position doesn’t mean that much come race day. And she hopes to use Miss-n-Out to work on her race strategy.\n“(In) Miss-n-Out, you are with other girls on the track, you do strategy, find out each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” Gartner said. “It is a race that is more like you will have on April 20.”\nLast year, Gartner’s then-teammate Jess Sapp won Miss-n-Out. Sapp out-sprinted Bella Veloce’s Abby Cooper to take the crown. Sapp and Cooper graduated last year.\nTwo riders from last year’s final six will compete Saturday: Kappa Delta’s Lindsey Manck and Individual Time Trial champ Teter’s Sarah Rieke. Rieke set a track record at ITTs on Wednesday. \nAlpha Gamma Delta senior Laura Miller, a distance rider for her team, said a lot of the individual series events are frustrating because they are built for sprinters.\n“It’s a little more difficult to see your time compared to everybody else,” she said. It helps the team, though, “because the race is a sprint.”\nAnd, ultimately, the most important thing to Miller is that her team is best prepared for the race.\n“We’re not going for the white jersey,” Miller said of the jersey given to the overall series winners. “It’d be awesome to have. It’s just an added bonus. If we get it, that’d be cool. If we don’t, we had fun doing it.”\n– Staff writer Chris Engel contributed to this report.