For most of the season, the athletes of the No. 18 Penn State men's an women's track and field teams have competed as individuals.

However, the teams will come together this weekend as they play host for the team-scored Sykes-Sabock Challenge Cup tonight at 5:30 and tomorrow morning at 10 at the Horace Ashenfelter III indoor track at the multi-sport facility.

Named for two former Penn State Track officials, the Sykes-Sabock Challenge Cup will be Penn State's last competition before the Big Ten championships on Feb. 24-25, it will also be the first true scored meet of the season. Unlike Penn State's previous meets, there will be a team winner of this weekend's meet.

Though last weekend's New Balance Collegiate Invitational was technically a scored meet, there were more than 100 teams at that meet, whereas this weekend will feature a format that more closely resembles the conference championships.

The meet will feature familiar opponents in Virginia Tech, Georgetown and Pittsburgh, all teams that have competed at Penn State earlier this season, as well as Big Ten rival Ohio State.

Because of the team-scoring format of the meet, Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said she and her staff face the challenge of formulating a lineup that gives Penn State a chance to win this week but one that does not burn them out either.

"We kind of did it with two premises," she said. "One, what's the best thing for each athlete to prepare them as they go into the Big Tens in two weeks? And two, equally, how can we enter them knowing we have a good shot of winning this meet?"

Alford-Sullivan said she hopes to see improvement from several areas of the team, most notably the throwers. She said that she feels Christen Clemson, Emma Schmelzer and Toya Woods are, "on the cusp of making a big difference for us as a team."

The 4 x 400 relay team of Shana Cox, Brienne Simmons, Aleesha Barber and Dominique Blake will look to break the school record of 3 minutes, 34.04 seconds they set last year, as last week's time of 3:35.20 came close to Alford-Sullivan expects the team to challenge that record.

"We ran a little bit faster last year. It was the first time our 4 x 4 relay team qualified for the national championships," she said. "They finished 12th, but they got the experience under their belt, and that fired them up to be a lot hungrier to go into this year. Now, this year, we will run a little faster on that relay."

Alford-Sullivan said she expects that Blake will run a faster split, as last weekend was her first competition of the season.

Last week, Penn State broke into the national rankings for the first time this season, ranking 18th in the country in the most-recent TrackWire.com top 25. Though Alford-Sullivan said it is a compliment to be ranked, she also knows that the rankings aren't the most important measure of a team.

"The rankings, I think in our sport, people don't pay a ton of heed to," she said. "It's the results that matter."