Trackmen dead last at Big Tens

By MATT WONG
Collegian Staff Writer

Last place had become a memory for the Penn State men's indoor track and field team, after finishing eighth at the Big Ten Championships last season.

This year the Nittany Lions (11-2) were poised to improve upon that, but somehow reverted their way back to the familiar cellar they inhabited in 1995 and '96, suffering the ever-familiar disappointing Big Ten results -- dead last.

The two-day event in Madison, Wis., left the Lions practically without life, finishing with a team score of 30 points, 20.5 points behind ninth-place Michigan. Michigan State ran away with the Big Ten title scoring 107 points, followed by Illinois (89) and Minnesota (83.5).

Penn State coach Harry Groves was extremely disappointed with the last-place finish despite facing strong competition.

"There are no kind of excuses," he said. "Obviously we're not as good as they are, but we're better than what we got."

Groves felt his team didn't perform up to its potential and said it looked intimidated and unprepared.

"In a big-league conference you have to think and act big league. We didn't do either," he said. "Track is not the kind of sport you can go halfway, and a few of our guys just didn't do anything."

Still, several Lions performed in big league fashion but lost to better competition.

Long jumpers George Audu and John Gorham, who have helped carry the team all season, placed second and third, respectively. But Audu's jump of 25-2½ feet and Gorham's leap of 25-½ fell short of catching Big Ten defending long jump champion, Iowa's Bashir Yamini, who captured the event with a mark of 25-6½.

Other Lion highlights included Ben Karcz's second-place finish in the 600-meter run with a time of 1 minute, 18.84 seconds, setting a Penn State record in the event. But he finished behind Illinois' Bobby True who broke an NCAA record running it in a time of 1:17.35.

But other than that, no Lion broke into the top five in any event.

In the heptathlon, Jon Kuretich finished ninth with a score of 4,762 and Dave Romilly finished 10th with 4,619.

Other top-10 finishers included Joe Hubbard, who placed seventh in the 800-meter run, and Gorham, who finished ninth in the triple jump. Also, Ryan Olkowski (high jump) and Carl Wolter (35-pound weight throw) each finished eighth in his respective event. And the 4x400 relay team finished sixth.

Despite the team's disappointment, Audu feels the team can learn from this humbling experience.

"We messed up," Audu said. "But we're a young team and we can only get better."

But that potential improvement will have to wait until the outdoor season, as the Lions conclude the indoor season in two weeks at the IC4A Championships in Boston and the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis.

• NCAA Indoor Nationals scheduled for the following weekend in Indianapolis.