The men's indoor track and field team will start its season tomorrow with the Nittany Lion Invitational at the Indoor Sports Complex at 10 a.m.

Elected team tri-captains Doug Walter, Barry Walsh and Greg Large will lead the Lions into the meet, which will be used by the team to determine exactly what kind of condition it is in after training the past few months. Tom Kleban, a former pole vaulter injured in a diving accident last July, was also elected an honorary captain.

"We'll see if our fall training paid off," Coach Harry Groves said. "This meet will show us what level we're at. We don't score it because at this time of the year, right after Christmas vacation, nobody's ready to have a scoring meet."

Groves is unsure which teams will compete the meet. Most schools are not yet back from the semester break.

Groves said he has a better idea concerning the condition of the distance runners due to the cross country season. But even the cross country runners have had no competition since November.

"I like to get away from it (competition) and come back and compete again. It's a good break for me," distance runner Jeff Novak said.

Large said the cross country runners will have a slight advantage over the other athletes because there is no comparison between competition and just practicing. Large added that the indoor team held a practice meet last Saturday that should give the athletes not on the cross country team a fair idea of where they stand going into the indoor season.

Novak said the small size of the track at the Indoor Sports Complex makes running on it tough. He said more injuries result from the constant turning.

Large said for the longer races on the track, where a runner starts is probably where he finishes.

"You must be extremely strong to pass on this track," he said.

Distance runner Steve Brown said it takes about two good workouts to get used to the basics to running on the track. He said a runner must use different tactics on the track as compared to cross country running. A runner does not run wide in the turns, but run tight and not allow competitors to pass on turns.

Novak said the team will use the meet to see where it is as far as performance goes and figure out its future workouts from there. Conditioning for the indoor season starts out with strength training and quickly gets into more speedwork, he said.

Large said the team will train straight through the indoor IC4A Championships into the outdoor season, so the team's workouts are actually geared toward the IC4As and the outdoor season.

Winner of six straight indoor and outdoor IC4A shot put titles and three-time All-American C.J. Hunter will be competing as well as triple- jumper Ricardo Hall and distance runners Brown and Mark Anderson.

"I rate this team very high. I see a lot of promise in everybody," Large said.