By Jacob Miller
After battling illness for the past few weeks, the track Hawkeyes are almost back to 100 percent as they enter their final home meet of the month.
“Overall for the team, everybody is looking good and feeling good,” said Joey Woody, the Iowa director of track and field. “We had that stomach virus that went through our team almost three-quarters of our team had some issue with that, so for the most part everybody is back, healthy, and feeling a lot better this week. I’m expecting these next two meets to really see some big improvement on performances.”
The Black and Gold Premier will be the fourth home meet in a row. The Hawks will compete against Notre Dame, Illinois State, Tulsa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Loyola, and Minnesota. For Illinois and Minnesota, only the men’s teams will compete.
The last time the men went up against the Illini was the Border Battle on Jan. 7. The Hawkeyes were defeated, 85-74, so they will seek a better performance this time around.
The Iowa women will also face some tough competition. Notre Dame’s women’s team is ranked 10th in the nation by the U.S. Track & field and Cross-Country Coaches Association. Last weekend at the Notre Dame Invitational, the Irish swept the mile thanks to big performances by graduate student Molly Seidel and senior Jacob Dumford, who won with times of 4:44.75 and 4:06.43, respectively.
At the Wieczorek Invitational Jan. 20-21, senior Tess Wilberding won the women’s mile as well as achieving a personal best time with 4:54.16, finally breaking the five-minute mile mark. She will compete again in today’s meet.
“I’m running different events, so we’ll kind of see how those go and use them as ways to get better for the later meets,” Wilberding said. “I think it’ll be fun to see how the [distance medley relays] go cause we haven’t had one of those this season yet.”
For the first time on the new track, the Hawkeyes will compete in the distance medley. This distance relay gradually increases distance with each passing of the baton, from the 400 meters, 800 meters, 1,200 meters, and 1,600 meters.
“I love getting back into racing, just kind of getting into the bigger meets coming up … to have this meet and some great competition,” sophomore Daniel Murphy said. “I hope to get something fast. I’m doing the [distance] med 1,600 leg, so that will be fun. I haven’t done medley relay before.”
The energy and excitement is high for the Hawkeyes, and they eagerly await the chance to show what they have and put on another stellar home-meet performance.
“They’re just hyped up and excited to be able to actually have home events like this that people are really excited about coming to,” Woody said. “They just love to go out and show what their able to do and be the show.”
