This weekend all the questions will be answered. Contenders or pretenders? Chumps or champs?

The Penn State women's track team heads to hostile Iowa for this year's Big Ten Indoor Track Championships with something to prove.

For the entire season, the team has talked about how this is the year it will all come together; this is the year the Nittany Lions will win the Big Ten title for the first time.

"I can't wait until we can come back from Iowa and hang up that banner in the rafters," senior Connie Moore said at the beginning of this season.

For the All-American and team captain, this weekend will be quite a dogfight.

The Lions are trying to unseat perennial powerhouse and two-time defending champion Michigan, while taking care of business against upstart Ohio State, and always-strong Indiana and Iowa.

Moore leads the Penn State sprint corps, which is the backbone of the program, and for the team to emerge victorious in Iowa City this weekend she will need to lead by example and step up big time.

At last year's championships, Moore finished second in the 200-meters and fifth in the 60-meters, but don't look for her to settle for anything less than first in both events this weekend. Already against Big Ten competition this year in the Sykes-Sabock Challenge Cup, Moore finished in first place in both events.

Penn State women's track coach Beth Alford-Sullivan was fairly relaxed in practice this week, even though this weekend places a lot of pressure on her as a coach.

Five years ago, when Alford-Sullivan took over the Penn State program, she had one goal in mind: to be in a position to win the Big Ten Championship within five years.

"I think back then in 1999 we knew it was going to take some time and some work to get that mentality in place," Alford-Sullivan said.

There is a great deal of anxiety knowing that this meet is the culmination of everything she and her staff have worked toward at Penn State, and the team knows how important a win this weekend would be. Some Penn State women's track team members who have been on the cusp of top finishes hope to have breakout performances this weekend. Sprinter Sara Shoaff is one role player who hopes to surprise the rest of the Big Ten field.

Other depth athletes will need to step up the way they did in the Sykes-Sabock Challenge for Penn State to have a chance.

The depth of this team is something several Penn State track and field boosters brought to Alford-Sullivan's attention last week.

"The boosters compared us to Michigan and Ohio State, and there are five or six events where those teams don't have point scorers in top-10 contention," she said.

Unlike the Wolverines and the Buckeyes, the Lions have the depth in every event to rack up points from every category.

Penn State has at least one athlete ranked in the top 10 in every event going into this weekend.

Everything that Alford-Sullivan, her coaching staff and the team itself has worked for over the past five years, will come to fruition or fade away this weekend.