For the seniors, it was a farewell to a familiar venue, but for many athletes, it represented a last chance to board the IU bus to Geneva, Ohio, and the Big Ten Championships in two weeks.
“This was the meet where we said, ‘If you’re hot and ready to go, get on the bus, and if you’re not, get ready for outdoors,’” IU Coach Ron Helmer said. “That’s what this meet was all about.”
The Hoosiers clashed with schools such as Indiana State, who has three nationally qualifying athletes, and South Florida, who traveled nearly 1,000 miles from Tampa, Fla.
In a season that has seen school records broken and personal records shattered, Hoosier Hills did not feature any top-10 marks or times and a decreased amount of personal records, despite the stakes of impressing the coaches in order to make the Big Ten roster.
“We are just getting ahead of ourselves,” Helmer said. “They know how good they can get, and they want to get there now. Some runners focused so much on setting times and not on just defeating the competition and, as a result, fell short of the times that they wanted to reach today.”
Helmer focused mainly on a group of 12 to 15 athletes that he thought needed to prove themselves, one of those athletes being sophomore distance runner Mark Chandler.
“He grew up a little bit today,” Helmer said. “He managed a stressful situation really well.”
Chandler ran the men’s 3K in a personal record time of 8:08.16, good enough for 11th in the Big Ten and best on a competitive men’s distance team.
“Coach said it was going to be a bloodbath this year to make it to Big Tens,” Chandler said. “A race like this is a real confidence booster. I knew this race was coming, I was just waiting for it.”
In a roster restriction that only allows teams to take four runners in the 3K, the Hoosiers have nine runners in a 10-second window, and Chandler found himself looking from the outside in — until Friday.
Chandler finds himself in the same position in the men’s mile, where the squad has eight runners within the same four-second window, and he sits fifth by 0.34 seconds, along with three other proven athletes.
Although the coaches attempted to mask the fact that Hoosier Hills was the final meet at Gladstein this season in order to maintain focus on Big Tens, seniors like Samantha Gwin couldn't help but get their emotions high.
“This was for Gladstein,” Gwin said. “It definitely hit me hard that this was my last chance to race on this track.”
Gwin, who was absent from the top 20 in the Big Ten for the women’s 600-meter run before the race, jumped over 10 spots to reach 10th in the conference with her personal record time of 1:32.26. She sits second on the team behind fellow senior Brie Roller.
“It’s been a long five years, I haven’t really scored for the team, and that’s something I hate,” said Gwin, who was redshirted her freshman year. “I just want to be able to contribute to the team this time.”
The Hoosiers closed out their team meeting at the end of the meet by singing the IU Fight Song behind the seniors, sending echoes of “I-U” into the rafters of the Fieldhouse.
