8 -- The Michigan Daily - SPORTSTuesday - Tuesday, January 18, 1994
Men's track uses Invite
to prepare for season
By TOM SEELEY hopes to achieve later this season, but
DAILY SPORTS WRITER overall, he was pleased with his per-
YPSILANTI - Even though it is formance.
still early in the season, the Michigan "For so early in the season, it was
men's indoor track team is confident adecenteffort,"Lancastersaid. "Early
that last year's finish in the lower half in the season you have to accept that
of the Big Ten will not repeat itself you're not going to perform as well as
this year. you'd like to, but these smaller meets
Friday at the Eastern Michigan are great building blocks for the later,
Invitational in Ypsilanti, several of more important (meets)."
the young Wolverines showed why Friday markedthedebutof sprinter
this season may be more successful and ex-football player Felman
than the ones the team has witnessed Malveaux. Thejunior had been slowed
in past years. by a bout with the flu that had pre-
Among the youngsters who vented himfromrunning in last week's
opened the 1994 campaign with solid intrasquad meet.
performances was sophomore Jon Malveaux may be joined in thej
Royce. He followed up a victory in sprints by his ex-teammate on the
last week's intrasquad meet with an- football team, Tyrone Wheatley. Hej
other victory after a jump of 7'2", an has expressed his interest in running
NCAA provisional qualifying height, track to the coaches, but his status for
in the high jump. this season is still up in the air.
Fellow sophomore Trinity "We're waiting to see what he
Townsend set a meet record in the decides to do," Warhurst said. "He
600 meters with a time of 1:20.57. has had to make a lot of serious deci-
With the first scoring meet of the sions about his career recently, but
season one week away, Friday's meet he's so darn talented it wouldn't take
was a chance for the Michigan coaches more than two or three weeks to get
to see their young squad perform be- him in shape, so we're not really wor-
fore the heart of the season begins. ried about that."
"It was just kind of a low-key Overall, the team is really geared
situation to get us started," Michigan toward a good performance at the Big
assistant coach Ron Warhurst said. Ten Indoor Championships which it
"It's an opportunity to find out where is hosting Feb. 25-26.
we're going to put a few people this "We're a much-improved team,"
upcoming weekend." Warhurst said. "We're looking to fin-
Winning the shot put was Wolver- ish in the top three in the Big Ten,
inejunior Chris Lancaster with athrow which would be nice because you
of 52' 7.5". The effort was a few feet don't want to finish eighth or ninth in
shorter than the distances Lancaster front of your home crowd."
Women runners take
first in Michigan Relays
By BRIAN SKLAR
FOR THE DAILY
The Michigan women's indoor
track and field team showed that it is
the strongest team in Michigan as it
dominated intrastate rivals Michigan
State, Eastern Michigan and Hillsdale
College at the Michigan Relays Sat-
urday.
The Wolverines faced their first
opposition of the season and were
well prepared.
Michigan coach James Henry was
pleased to see the team make "signifi-
cant progress since the intrasquad
meet."
In the field events, Ronda Meyers
won the shot put. High jumpers
Monica Black and Linda Stuck tied
for the best jump as they both finished
with marks of five feet -eight inches.
Laura Jerman also had a good per-
formance as she jumped 17 feet and
11 and 1/4 inches in the long jump.
Eastern Michigan's Joy Inniss won
the triple jump.
The Wolverines continued to
show their excellence in the distance
events. Cross country All-American
Courtney Babcock, who had a very
solid performance in the intrasquad
meet a week before, carried that mo-
mentum into Saturday's competition
and set a provisional qualifying time
record in the 3,000 meter run with a
time of 9:26.53.
Molly McClimon, another cross*
country All-American, impressively
won the mile run in 4:44.48 as she
also set a provisional qualifying time
record.
McClimon was "happy" with her
accomplishment and was somewhat
surprised she did so well.
"I felt better than I expected," she
said.
Henry was not surprised with the
performances of the distance runners.
"It's difficult to find competition
for the distance and middle distance
events," Henry said.
Michigan State coach Judi Brown
King was glad to have such "good
competition" for her team.
For Henry, this meet "cleared
things up" for what to expect this
season. The Wolverines are confi-
dent about achieving their pre-season
goal- to win the indoor meet at the Big
Ten championships.
And for Henry, the key to doing
this is to "continue to improve."
SARAH WHITING/Daily
The Michigan women's track team captured the Michigan Relays Saturday.
Women tumblers escape meet with narrow victory
By MELANIE SCHUMAN
DAILY SPORTS WRITER
A one-point victory was hardly
the way the Big Ten champion Michi-
gan women's gymnastic team wanted
to start its 1994 campaign, but this
first win only opened the Wolverines
eyes to the task at hand.
Michigan traveled to the Blue/
Gold Invitational this weekend at
coach Bev Plocki's alma mater -
West Virginia- totake on the Moun-
taineers and Pittsburgh, in what was
surprisingly a tight competition.
"Two important things came out
of this meet - we got the first meet
under our belt and came out un-
scathed," Plocki said.
Pittsburgh, who did not compete
with a full lineup because of injuries,
posed little threat, but West Virginia
strongly challenged the confidence of
the Michigan squad.
"Even though it was a close
win...we know what we have to do,"
freshman Andrea McDonald said.
"But no matter how you do, every-
body believes in you."
Many of the gymnasts accredited
unpredictable falls and breaks to the
"first-meet jitters" in a contest during
which they performed innovative tum-
bling passes and more difficult rou-
tines. This was done in order to test
themselves under new United States
Gymnastics Federation scoring.
"Some of the mistakes are pretty
representative of the first meet of the
season," Plocki said. "There are a
couple of spots we can definitely
strengthen in our lineups."
Debbie Berman, who finished
fourth all-around said, "The one thing
we're coming off of this is that the
breaks we made are correctable."
Consistency was one suggestion
offered by Beth Wymer, who cap-
tured the top scores on all four indi-
vidual events. Throughout the meet,
gymnasts suffered from atypical falls
and missed nailing tumbling routines.
After the first event, Michigan led
West Virginia by two points, but the*
Mountaineers overtook the Wolver-
ines by a half-tenth of a point after
three rounds.
Plocki and her staff anticipated
minor problems before the meet and
are optimistic that practice will pro-
vide the opportunity to correct this
weekend's mishaps.
Blue gymnasts capture fourth at Wind City Inivitational
0
By AARON BURNS
DAILY SPORTS WRITER
The Michigan men's gymnastics
team overcame a slow start at the
Windy City Invitational Saturday to
finish fourth in a 12-team field.
The Wolverines finished strong to
compile 271.925 points, finishing
behind champion Ohio State (280.35),
Iowa (276.075) and Minnesota
(273.825).
The Wolverines quickly fell be-
hind in the competition to eighth place
after scoring a meager 43.8 on the
pommel horse, the afternoon's open-
ing event.
"We put ourselves at a disadvan-
tage," Cory Huttenga said. "But we
did rebound."
The Wolverines' comeback
opened more than a few eyes at this
meet hosted by Illinois-Chicago.
After the fifth event - the high
bar-Michigan found itself in fourth
place, just four points behind a Min-
nesota team that the Wolverines had
defeated last week.
Even though Michigan did not win
the overall title, it received some solid
performances.
Ben Verrall, Raul Molina and Rich
Dopp all reached the finals in the
floor exercise.
Verrall finished third overall in
the floor exercise while Molina com-
peted in the high bar finals. Mike
Mott performed in the finals in the
team's Achilles' heel --- the pommel
horse.
"If we had performed better on the
pommel horse and parallel bars, we
would have finished third," Huttenga
said.
Although Michigan missed 12 of
its 36 routines- two more than it did
in its previous meet - coach Bob
Darden was encouraged with the over-
all results.
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