The Penn State women's indoor track and field team will compete at 11 a.m. today and tomorrow at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational at the Armory track in New York City.
In their fourth consecutive weekend of competition, the Nittany Lions take to the road for the first time. This will be their largest meet yet, featuring more than 100 teams including Ohio State. This will be Penn State's first look at a Big Ten team this season.
"We're really excited about seeing the Ohio State team," head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said. "They've got some good sprinters on the women's side and we're looking to see how we stack up."
This weekend will be the first meet featuring team scoring during Penn State's indoor season. The top eight finishers in each event receive scores toward their final team score, which will determine the meet champion on Saturday. Despite a sixth place finish in last year's event, Alford-Sullivan said she believes her team can compete for the title.
Four-time All-American Shana Cox is coming off a record-breaking showing last weekend that earned her Big Ten Track Athlete of the Week honors. Cox automatically qualified for NCAA championships in the 400-meter dash with a time of 52.31 seconds, the fastest time in NCAA competition this year by more than half a second. Cox will step away from the 400-meter event to run the 200-meter dash this weekend.
Briene Simmons will also try to continue her hot streak when she runs for the 4 x 400-meter relay and 800-meter dash events. Simmons has been a part of four Penn State records set this season: individual records in the 1,000-meter and 800-meter races as well as two record breaking relay teams. Tightening her NCAA provisional qualifying time in the 800-meter event will be a focus for Simmons.
"She hopes to improve her NCAA mark in the open 800 this weekend," Alford-Sullivan said. "She ran 2 [minutes, 7 seconds], she's looking to improve that down to about a 2:05 race. She can get that this weekend. She'll be fresh for it."
The draw of making the trip to New York is the atmosphere around the high-level teams that Penn State will face. Surrounded by top teams like North Carolina, LSU, Arkansas and South Carolina, the Lions hope to earn more NCAA championship qualifying marks as well as improve on marks earned over the last three weeks.
"The quality of this meet is why we go to the Armory," Alford-Sullivan said. "It really gives us the ability to see some quality teams and top programs at the NCAA level."
