The Wisconsin men’s track team will be traveling to Cedar Falls, Iowa tonight to compete in the University of Northern Iowa-Dome Open. The invitational will serve as the Badgers’ final tune-up before the Big Ten Indoor Championships begin the following weekend.

The Badgers will be primarily competing in the field events, but Luke Hoenke, Steve Rynearson, Nathan Probst and Eric Hatchell will be the lone UW runners at the UNI-Open as they attempt to secure a spot for themselves at the Big Ten championships.

According to Badger coaches, the field athletes will not be resting due to the fact that their events require more precision than stamina. Assistant coach Mark Napier, who is in charge of the field events, will be looking for his athletes to fine-tune their skills in this weekend’s meet.

“For the field event guys, it’s a more technical event,” Napier said. “It doesn’t take as much out of you if you’re competing, so when you’re talking about the technical aspects of track,m and you’re dealing with a lot of field events, it’s good for them to get going when they’re a little bit fresher, and it’s more of a confidence type issue.”

At the UNI-Open, the field event athletes will be looking to gain confidence going into the Big Ten championships. The invitational consists of many Division II and Division III schools so the competition will be fairly weak for the Badgers, but just getting into a groove before Big Ten championships and the start of the outdoor season will be the main priority.

“The way we train, we typically load pretty heavily throughout the season, and we really download to freshen them up when we’re close to Big Ten’s so we never really know until we get there,” Napier said. “But, from the years of progression, the way we’ve done it has worked out for us.”

The track and field coaches are also eager to see many of their athletes to step up in particular events as they try to organize the team before the season truly gets into the swing of things.

“I’m hoping a lot of people step up,” Napier said. “I’m looking for the vaulters to step up, the long and triple jumpers, as we haven’t competed a lot of them this year.”

For senior Darren Niedermeyer, this weekend’s pole vault event will be a strong indicator of his progression as he has been battling a back injury all season and hopes to get back on pace for his final year of track.

“Well, there’s some pretty good vaulters, actually,” Niedermeyer said. “One guy’s around high-17s and another guy around low-17s, and in practice I’ve put up just about 17s. I’ve been a little off, but I think I can get up there.”

With the indoor season quickly coming to a close, most on the team are looking forward to the outdoor season. While Niedermeyer has competed on a better level indoors, he prefers to be outdoors.

“I’m usually better outdoors, except for last year,” Niedermeyer said. “Outdoors you usually have some wind on your back so you’re a little bit faster, and bigger meets are usually outdoors so you just feed off of the fans and the good weather.”

Napier agreed, also citing the addition of the distance team and certain long-distance events in the outdoors.

“Outdoors, we’re much better,” Napier said. “We have some more distance events and we’re typically better in the outdoor distances. We have the steeplechase; we have the 10,000 for which we have better, longer runners. We have a lot of people that are good long runners, obviously because of the cross country team, so we’re more in tune for [the outdoor season].”

More importantly, this spring, the Badgers will be hunting for a Big Ten Triple Crown (conference titles in cross country, indoor and outdoor track) and the field athletes’ performance at the UNI-Dome Open should prove a strong indicator of their chances to take another step toward that goal next week.

“We don’t like to lose,” Napier said. “Our guys don’t like to lose, either. You know it’s a very competitive team, so that’s definitely our goal to complete a Triple Crown.”