As the No. 11 men’s track and field team heads out of town, the 10th-ranked women’s team gets to enjoy all the comforts of being at home to compete for the Big Ten title.
This morning marks the beginning of the 2010 Big Ten Women’s Indoor Track and Field Championships at the Ashenfelter Multi-Sport Facility, and senior sprinter Fawn Dorr said the pressure is on.
For Dorr, a favorite to win the 200-meter dash, losing at home in front of a potentially rowdy group of Penn State fans is not an option.
“I think I can speak for everyone on the team when I say that I’d rather run myself into the ground than watch another team do a victory lap on my track,” Dorr said.
The Nittany Lions enter the championships as the top-ranked team in the Big Ten. Despite the ranking, Lions head coach Beth Alford-Sullivan isn’t counting out the opposition.
Although they are unranked, Minnesota is a threat to win a fourth consecutive championship, and No. 19 Indiana is the only other ranked team in the conference.
“I give Minnesota a lot of credit,” Alford-Sullivan said. “They’re very good and they’ve got a lot of depth and they’ve got some interesting entries across the board that could go really well for them. But you have to give some dues to Indiana. Indiana’s come charging this year. They’ve turned their program around and made it very, very competitive.”
Penn State features its own group of competitive runners and three of which, including Dorr, figure to continue their national success. Dorr, a former All-American and Big Ten Champion, leads the charge in the 200 and 400 meter dashes. Joining Dorr in the 200 is junior Shavon Greaves, who along with the 200 is a favorite in the 60-meter dash.
It won’t be the first time the two have run together, Dorr said. The first time, Greaves easily beat Dorr in the 200 – a race Dorr says she has no chance of beating her teammate in, adding that it doesn’t matter who wins as long as it’s a teammate.
“As long as I lose to a teammate, I couldn’t care less,” Dorr said. “I’m making points, they’re making points, it’s whatever.”
In order for the Lions to get those key points, they will have to be successful on semi-final day. Like the Olympics, runners will have to qualify Saturday for the championship races on Sunday. The runners will have to endure short breaks and a long time frame to reach their goal, Alford-Sullivan said.
“It’s not like a basketball game or a couple of games in a tournament,” she said. “It’s a situation where the entire program is focused and fixated on competing for two full days. We’ve got to have an emotional pace that works and comes together for that final day, but you can’t miss that first day. The first day is when you make the finals, so you really got to bring it the first day and then you re-group and bring it again for the finals.”
Coaches just tell the runners to win their Saturday heat and then worry about the finals, Dorr said, especially in the Big Tens. But Dorr ultimately is not too worried about her performance.
“I honestly could either run by myself or race a gold [medal-winning] Olympian and I would run the same race,” Dorr said confidently. “It really makes no difference who I’m against.”
