March 31, 2011
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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue men's and women's track and field teams are set to host their outdoor season home opener on Saturday with the Seventh-Annual Mike Poehlein Invitational. The meet will start Friday at 3 p.m. with the men's and women's hammer throws, while the remainder of the action scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at Rankin Track and Field.
The Boilermakers have hosted this meet in each of the past five seasons, honoring their former men's head coach who led the squad from 1982 to 2001. Under Poehlein the Purdue men posted their first second-place team finishes in school history, scoring matching runner-up showings indoors and outdoors in 1989, another second-place effort outdoors in 1990, and a repeat indoor runner-up finish in 2001. His teams placed at the NCAA Championships 17 times in his tenure, including a 22nd-place finish at the 1985 national indoor meet.
Several of the same school's from last year's Poehlein Invitational return to West Lafayette this weekend, including Big East representatives Louisville and Notre Dame. Others set to attend include Butler, Ball State, DePaul, Valparaiso, Illinois-Chicago and IPFW, while limited squads from Illinois and IUPUI will be on hand as well.
The Boilermakers will have a very high level of participation in this weekend's meet, fielding at least four runners in six track events and four events on the women's side, in addition to 10,000-meter run and 3,000-meter steeplechase entries for the Boilermaker women.
"We want to take full advantage of our home meets, giving as many people the opportunity to compete in as many events as possible," said Purdue head coach Jack Warner. "We're always excited to compete on our home turf, and it's even more exciting that some of the same high-powered teams return year-after-year for our events. It lets us know we're doing something right."
This weekend presents several showdowns in the throws events on both the men's and women's sides, with a variety of top-flight competitors scheduled to be on hand. The men's events should feature standouts such as DePaul's Tim Nedow and Ryan Asta, Denes Veres and Andrew Hills of Notre Dame and Weston Banks of Louisville, in addition to Boilermaker studs Bill Hardcastle and Jakob Engel. The shot put will be the most competitive of the contests with five of the top 20 marks in the nation on hand.
On the women's side, the Boilermaker quartet of Stacey Wannemacher, Terri Anderson, Dani Bunch and Liberty Slinden look to build off solid opening marks at last weekend's SEC/Big Ten Challenge, and will have outstanding competition to do so against. Louisville has its own stable of standouts in D'Ana McCarty, Khadija Abdullah and Amashi-Ali Kendall, while Notre Dame's Rudy Atang and DePaul's Alanna Kovacs and Melissa Fraser could make some noise as well.
Other exciting competitions could be present in the men's pole vault, the women's 1,500-meter run and the women's long jump. The men's pole vault puts Purdue's Chris Thoman and Mitch Erickson up against Notre Dame junior Kevin Schipper, who enters the weekend tied for fourth in the country with a mark of 5.20 meters (17-00.75), while Boilermaker sophomore Camille Buscomb has a trio of Fighting Irish standouts to run against in the 1,500 in Rebecca Tracy, Kelly Curran and McKinzie Schulz. Tracy currently has the nation's No. 8 mark at 4:22.78. The women's long jumpo could potentially put Purdue's indoor Big Ten Champion Leah Eber against the No. 2 jumper in the nation in Louisville's Charachesicia Lockhart. Lockhart has a mark of 6.29 meters (20-07.75) from the Alabama Relays last weekend, while Eber is currenly ranked 16th in the country with her jump of 6.04 meters (19-09.75) from Saturday.
Live results of this weekend's meet can be found on the Boilermakers' Twitter Page and Facebook Page, while results will be provided by Delta Timing Group.