Marquette University Athletics
In The Fast Lane
2/18/2000 12:00:00 AM | Men's Indoor Track
Feb. 18, 2000
Once a week, sophomore Brian Hardin will share his thoughts on the men's track 2000 season. Here is this week's entry:
A stretch of great meets ended last weekend at Iowa State with the best performances of the season for the Marquette track squad. While we didn't place very well, virtually everyone that attended set a personal record and their were two school records broken. There were over 30 teams at Iowa State, including some of the top teams in the country. Florida, Auburn, Oregon, Texas A&M, just to name a few, were present - which made the quality of the meet extraordinary.
Top times were made by a Golden Eagle in every event, which allowed us to feel good about the meet even without a top-place finish. Nic Wucherer set a school and freshman record in the 60-meter hurdles, while the 4x400 team shattered the school record by over three seconds. The relay team of Marek Krawczyk, Brian Olsson, myself and Ken Mueller ran a heat-winning time of 3:14.42, which, at a meet like the Cyclone Classic, was still only good enough for 12th place. Marek also set a freshman record in the 400, when he ran 48.87, smashing the previous record by almost a half-second. A third school record could have fallen, but an official disqualified me in the 200 meters for supposedly running out of my lane. My time was good enough to have surpassed the record, but for some reason an official was watching the curve of the unseeded section of the 200 and decided to disqualify a kid from Marquette for taking a step outside his lane. I watched the tape of it and am not convinced that I did it. Unfortunately, track and field does not have instant replay yet, so the decision could not be overturned.
After this three-week period of great meets at Minnesota, Northern Iowa and Iowa State, everyone's times have dropped and put us in a good position to perform well at the Conference USA Championship next weekend. I am seeing teammates get excited about track again, something that, at times last year, was lacking. We had a good, hard week of practice leading up to this weekend's meet at UW-Oshkosh, and a lot of guys are taking this meet easy in preparation for the real test next week. The top times in the conference are up on the internet and we are well-represented with a number of athletes among the top five in each event. We have the capability to do well in the events we enter, and I think that we could surprise a lot of people. While the idea of a conference team title may be too much to ask at this time, with the way the guys have performed over the past two weeks, some individual champions are certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
The meet this weekend is at UW-Oshkosh and begins Saturday morning at 10. This is a meet where some of us could be competing in events that we might not do at conference, but it will give everyone a chance to run, which is definitely needed. I know there are a lot of guys on the team from Wisconsin, so it would be nice to see as many supporters at the meet as possible. We all look forward to the meet and getting one step closer to our indoor main event. I hope to see as much Blue and Gold there as possible and, until then, GO MARQUETTE!
Brian Hardin (Class of 2002)
