IU track and field is back home for this weekend’s Hoosier Hills invitational after traveling to South Bend, Indiana, for the Meyo Invitational at Notre Dame last weekend.
This weekend’s meet will be the last time the team competes at home for the rest of the academic year. The Hoosiers will travel for the next 11 consecutive weeks. The next time the Hoosiers return home will be in early May for the Billy Hayes Invitational in Bloomington. IU Coach Ron Helmer did not seem fazed by this amount of travel and said he’s used to it.
“I’ve become immune to it. It’s just what I do,” Helmer said. “I’ve been doing it forever, and if I need a weekend off I just don’t go. Most teams travel way more than we do because they do not have a facility like we do that gives us a chance to host more meets.”
Helmer mentioned the athletes get excited to travel and get out of Bloomington a little. Because they haven't been traveling much yet, he said, it hasn't become old to them.
However, as the season continues the excitement of the athletes will start to fade, Helmer said.
“Over the course of time, traveling starts to get old for them because they are missing class and having to work like crazy to get ahead or get caught up,” Helmer said. “At that point staying at home starts to be pretty attractive, but that time hasn’t come yet.”
As for the importance of this meet, Coach Helmer says it is one of the last chances for the athletes to earn a spot in the Big Ten Championship. The IU coaches have their own standards for athletes to earn a spot in one of the most important meets of the season, aside from the competition standards of the Big Ten Championship meet.
“For us, we need people to be at a certain level performance-wise before we consider them for one of those spots,” Helmer said. "We want to make sure the people we take to the Big Ten Championship meet belong in that environment and are ready for that environment so we’ve got some standards mostly based on times in the past.”
For some, this weekend is just a season-culminating meet, but others do have a lot on the line.
“This weekend for some is to break through and hit those standards so they can be considered for the Big Ten roster,” Helmer said. “But we also have a lot of people ready to run now, so I’m really excited about that.”
