The Penn State women's indoor track and field team continues to climb in this week's major national rankings yesterday after beginning the season unranked.

The Lions are No. 13 in both the trackwire.com and U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association national polls. The team retained last week's No. 13 ranking in the trackwire.com poll and moved up from No. 16 in the USTFCCCA poll.

Head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan learned of the team's new national position at practice yesterday, say

ing she had not had time to check during preparation for this weekend's Big Ten Championships.

"That's good to know, that we're 13th," Alford-Sullivan said. "I didn't know that. Good, we should be."

The trackwire.com rankings are determined by taking the top results from collegiate athletes around the country and calculating what team scores would come from those results if they appeared at a national meet. While those rankings are important, Alford-Sullivan believes the Coaches Association poll is more representative of actual team strength.

"They're actual track coaches, so they're going off their experience of knowing the teams," she said. "They're supposed to be experts in their conference and how people would do. It's less precise from a score standpoint, but more precise in terms of what a program really has.

The coaches on the executive committee of Division I track and field Coaches Association vote weekly on the top 20 teams in the country. In the first two polls of the indoor season, Penn State had been unranked by the coaches' poll, but has broken into national recognition over the past two weeks.

As the Lions prepare for Big Ten championships this weekend, the new national rankings, especially from the Coaches Association, show a growing national respect for the team. The rise in the polls shows Penn State has translated its performances on the track into a growing respect among Div. I coaches.

"The coaches have a bit more accuracy because they've been through it and they know what a team is capable of," Alford-Sullivan said.

The ranking will be the last before the Big Ten championships in Champaign, Ill. Other Big Ten teams in the trackwire.com top 25 are Michigan at No. 1, Minnesota at No. 9 and Illinois at No. 16. In the coaches' poll only Michigan and Minnesota joined Penn State in the top 20, with Michigan at No. 2 and Minnesota No. 10.