Hubers, Poore qualify for second straight NCAA meet in men’s 5K

It was two-for-two for IU on Saturday in the men’s 5,000-meter event.
Juniors Ben Hubers and Andrew Poore earned their qualifications for the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 8-11 in Des Moines, Iowa with fourth- and fifth-place finishes, respectively, in the NCAA East Preliminary Meet at IU’s Robert C. Haugh Track and Field Complex.

Hubers finished in 14:08.30 and Poore in 14:09.37 to advance to the national championships for the second straight year.

“Ben and I especially work together in every single race, either he feeds off of me or I feed off of him,” Poore said. “And today the race play was I take it out early. I just position us, make sure we’re in the place we need to be, but ever since last night, maybe Ben was going to feel a little better leading the race, so he took it over."

Poore will be competing in two events at the NCAAs since he also advanced in the 3,000-meter steeplechase on Friday.

“I felt like there was a little pressure on me today, because we had three steeplechasers qualified last night, and I was getting really excited and it was my turn,” Hubers said. “I was a little nervous but I wasn’t really worried about today, I was just trying to relax, I knew if I raced like I’ve been racing all year, that would do the job.”

IU coach Ron Helmer expresses his feelings after the qualification of Hubers and Poore.

“I was excited,” Helmer said. “Ben and Andrew out there, they put the exclamation point out, they needed to be in the top-five, they ran tactically a great race, they made the top-five.

“Every day, if somebody came out wanting to root for Indiana, they had something to be excited about, to be proud of and that’s important. That makes me proud of what our athletes went to accomplish.”

Both Hubers and Poore agreed they had been working toward this goal ever since they arrived at IU.

“I think it’s the kind of program we’ve been striving to have since we both came here,” Hubers said. “I came to IU because I knew we had a bunch of really strong recruits in my class. We’ve been saying for years we’ve got a lot of potential we’re going to be good, and I think hard work is finally starting to pay off and what we wanted when we came here.”

Hubers said that with Derek Drouin and Andy Bayer out for injuries, the team trophy at the NCAA Outdoor meet seems to be out of the picture, but he said the ones who qualified still have strong goals and look forward to competing in Iowa.

“Without those two, it will be hard to get a team trophy, but at the same time, we have been doing pretty well, and we’ve also managed to maintain a pretty balanced track team as well,” Hubers said. “It will be kind of cool to go out there as a distance team and try to beat a lot of these sprint schools and big time track programs.”

Hubers and Poore agreed being at home represents an advantage, and also brings an extra motivation to perform well.

“All the families are here, not just your teammates, but also athletes around the team, administrators, friends that you see every day in Bloomington, they’re all around,” Poore said. “It’s definitely a comfort advantage, a relaxation advantage.”

Helmer added that the IU athletes have the ability to perform well at home as well as on the road.

“We pride ourselves at being as good away from home as we are at home, and I think we are,” Helmer said. “It was great to be able to do this at home and in front of our crowd, and our athletes performed well, so they took advantage of the positives that are here for us and made it a good weekend for us.

“The national meet is such an incredible competition, and I think we’re up to it, so we’ll see what happens.”