After getting through its indoor frame, the Penn State women's track and field team is focusing on the outdoor portion of its season after finishing the indoor season with a 21st place finish in the National championships.

Although it failed to meet its goal of a top 15 finish, Penn State left Nationals with two individuals and one relay being named All-Americans.

Brienne Simmons and Shana Cox took honors in the 800 and 400 meters, respectively, while the 4 x 400 meter relay team of Cox, Simmons, Aleesha Barber and Dominique Blake continued its solid season with a Penn State record time of 3 minutes 33.39 seconds, good enough for fourth in the nation.

Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan was both pleased and disappointed with the outcome of the meet and said that the team could have done more, as Bridget Franek and Gayle Hunter narrowly missed chances to score. However, she feels that the experience will help the team for the outdoor season.

"The indoor season translates to the outdoor season so well for us," she said. "As you look back on it, you say 'Great we did some great things, we're going to use those into the outdoor season,' and the mistakes we've made prep us up for the outdoor season too."

The outdoor season offers a clean slate for the team after coming up short of its goals at both Nationals and at last month's Big Ten championships.

Alford-Sullivan said the team as a whole will be more comfortable running outdoors, as the sport is generally focused on the outdoor events.

Whatever season we're in, we try to give 100 percent," she said. "In reality the true sport of track and field is an outdoor sport. I think outdoor is really where it's at in our three seasons."

Though many of the indoor events also take place outdoors, several new events, such as the javelin, discus and the 4 x 100 meter relay are added to the competition.

The addition of the throwing events should help Penn State at Big Tens, as Christen Clemson is a former Big Ten runner-up in the discus and Heidi Nadeau finished fourth in the javelin at last year's Big Tens.

One disadvantage Penn State faces in the outdoor season is the climate in Pennsylvania. The uncertainty of the early spring weather in State College forces the team to compete in warmer climates for much of the season. Alford-Sullivan said that the team is fortunate to have a great indoor facility to train at and that the team will still face solid competition on the road.

"It's a reality," she said. "Indoor, the facilities are an issue. Outdoor the weather is an issue. We try and do the best of both worlds here with a great facility here for the indoors and we chase the weather outdoors and have a schedule that gets us into some good competitions."

Adding to the optimism is the fact that Penn State will be hosting the Big Ten championships May 11-13, and Alford-Sullivan said that running in front of the home crowd will add extra motivation to take home Penn State's first Big Ten outdoor championships after a few near misses in the past few years.

"In the last five years we've been runner-up four times and we've been third place once and we're tired of that situation," she said. "We want to win and we want to win at home."