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| Noah Simon and the Pioneers compete Friday night |
Some of the nation's top NCAA Division III track and field teams will meet Friday, April 10, for the Nike/Impact Sports UW-Platteville Invitational.
Wartburg, UW-Eau Claire, La Crosse, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stevens Point and Dubuque are among those scheduled to join the Pioneers in having full men's and women's teams at this high-level event.
"It looks like it's going to be a really good meet," Pioneer Coach Jim Nickasch said. "Now, it's early in the season, and we don't know what events everyone will be in (from other schools), so all we can to is take care of ourselves. We're going to load up some relays and things like that. The kids are really excited and some have been holding off on some big events until here. They want to perform well here. It's certainly setting up well. All we need is decent weather."
Taking advantage of the new lights on the three-year-old track, Nickash has set the starting time at 3 p.m. for field events and 5 p.m. for running competitions.
"Teams are really excited to try those," the coach said. "I've had them on during the high school meets, and they are really nice. People go by and can't believe how nice the facility is."
Besides not making students miss as much class time, the lights are also beneficial for the running events, Nickasch said.
"Now the dashes and jumps have maximum wind limits, so if you have excessive wind, nothing counts," he explained. "The whole concept now is to run at night when the winds have died down."
The Pioneers will build on an indoor season in which they had five NCAA III all-Americans and were in the national team rankings. Returners Mitch Spees, Scott Howard and Jessica Scott all competed in the NCAA III outdoor championships last year.
"We want to pretty much have a continuation of the indoor season," Nickasch said. "We have some events we are really strong in. We have good middle-distance and quarter-milers. Last weekend in St. Louis, Andy Melby won the hurdles. We hope to get some vaulters to nationals, and Corey (Digman) is throwing real well. We don't have the depth from a team perspective, and there are more events in the outdoors, so that hurts us a little bit. We're working on developing that depth."
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