**Meet moved to Sunday, 10:30 a.m.

4/5/07

High-powered meet to christen new track

It's only fitting that a premier facility is christened with a premier event.

UW-Platteville will unveil its brand-new outdoor track on April 14 with a high-powered meet that includes some of the Midwest's strongest teams.

The inaugural UW-Platteville Invitational features men's and women's teams from the University of Wisconsin, the reigning NCAA I men's indoor champions; UW-Oshkosh, UW-Stevens Point, Wartburg and the Pioneers, who all were in the top 20 of the March NCAA III indoor championships; and the UW-La Crosse men, who were second at the NCAA III nationals.

"It should be one of the better outdoor meets of the season for the whole Midwest," Pioneer Coach Jim Nickasch said. "That's a great lineup. A lot of those teams have done real well at the national level. It will be an interesting Saturday. If the weather is nice, there will be a chance to run a lot of good races."

The new outdoor track is proving to be fast, Nickasch said, after observing his Pioneers practice on it. The nine-lane track features a 10-millimeter polyurethane Beynon surface.

"We did something a little different with the surface," the sixth-year UWP coach said. "A lot of tracks have a full-pour polyurethane, which makes it softer. Ours is a combination surface, which makes it not real soft but not real hard. I think that will make for faster times."

The facility is also spectator-friendly, as all events except the javelin will be enclosed in the track. There are two hammer/disc cages, two shot put areas, three sand pits allowing for the long and triple jumps to be run simultaneously and four pole vault boxes with two pits, allowing two competitions at the same time. The javelin will be thrown right next to the facility.

The new track complex, adjacent to Williams Fieldhouse, is getting rave reviews from the Pioneers.

"It's funny in that each day when we go out there and the kids come out of the fieldhouse, they get on the track and look around like, 'Is this really here? Is this really ours?' " Nickasch said. "It's really been a welcome change and allowed us to do some training things that we were not able to do before. We've seen the payoffs already."

The UW-Platteville Invitational begins at 10:30 a.m. with field events. The running events start at 12:30 p.m.