Wisconsin will look to come home with a trophy from the 2006 NCAA Indoor Championships being held at the University of Arkansas this weekend. The Badgers will be well represented at the championship with 10 total athletes: seven men and three women.
Men's head coach and this year's Coach of the Year Ed Nuttycombe talked about Wisconsin's goals for the weekend.
You prepare all year to compete the best you can at the highest-level meet, which this is. We are taking 10 athletes there who all have the chance to score,\ Nuttycombe said. ""Certainly that is our goal, to have them all score, for all of them to be All-Americans if possible.""
The men's track team consists of junior Demi Omole in the 60-meter dash, senior Ben Gregory in the mile run, junior Chris Solinsky in both the 3,000 and 5,000-meter runs, senior Alonzo Moore in the triple jump, and the distance-medley relay made up of Gregory, freshman Joe Pierre, junior Chad Melotte and Solinsky.
Wisconsin's distance medley relay heads into the championship with the fastest time in the nation of 9:32:76. The time was an automatic qualifying time and the second fastest time in school history, falling only behind the mark of 9:32:31 set in 2002.
Melotte expressed his enthusiasm to compete in his first NCAA championship in the DMR.
""I'm excited. It's my first trip down to nationals. I'm just excited that we are coming in with the No. 1 time,"" Melotte said. ""Ever since I've been here we have placed, so hopefully we can just keep that tradition going.""
Solinsky will also look to keep tradition. He is the reigning champion in the 300-meter run. Solinsky was recently named the 2006 Big Ten Conference Men's Indoor Track Athlete of the Year, and he also ran away from this year's Big Ten Conference Indoor track meet with the Athlete of the Championships award.
The women are sending junior Katrina Rundhaug and senior Maggie Grabow in the 5000-meter run, along with senior Melissa Talbot in the pentathlon. Rundhaug heads into the championship with a time of 16:13:43, while Grabow was added on Tuesday after another student-athlete scratched from the event. Talbot goes into the pentathlon ranked 16th with a point total of 3,950. No matter what their rank or how they got to the championship, look for these three Badgers to have a good showing.
While in past seasons the Badgers have taken usually around 15 athletes to the championship, they still have the confidence and ambition to finish near the top.
""We don't have as big of a team as we did last year; we only have 10 people going this year,"" Moore said. ""But I feel that due to our potential, that we have a very good chance to place in the top four.""\
