Track & Field

In decisive fashion, the Minnesota men’s track and field team successfully defended its Big Ten indoor championship.
The Gophers were without six-time All-American Hassan Mead, who is struggling with an Achilles’ tendon injury. With the indoor season as short as it is, the team said it decided it would be better to have Mead not waste a year of eligibility while he battles an injury.
Plenty of other Gophers stepped up in Mead’s absence, with a total of five Minnesota athletes being crowned Big Ten champions in six different events .

One Gopher athlete inched closer to one of the most prestigious collegiate awards.

Longtime Gophers men's cross country coach Steve Plasencia was announced as Minnesota's next men's track and field coach on Monday.

Plasencia will replace Phil Lundin , who left for the same position at St. Thomas in May after 13 years at the helm.

"I feel tremendously honored to be given the opportunity to be the next head men's track and field coach at the University of Minnesota," Plasencia said in a statement. "Our focus will be to help student-athletes achieve excellence in both their academic and athletic aspirations."

Long time Gophers cross country coach Steve Plasencia was announced as Minnesota's next men's track and field coach today by Athletic Director Joel Maturi.

Plasencia will replace Phil Lundin, who left for the same position at St. Thomas last May after 13 years at the helm.

"I feel tremendously honored to be given the opportunity to be the next head men's track and field coach at the University of Minnesota," Plasencia said in a statement.

Four years ago, Shani Marks was two-tenths of a meter from making the United States Olympic team after posting a triple jump score of 13.53 meters - good enough for fourth place at the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials but not enough to punch her ticket to Athens.

Last weekend at the 2008 U.S. trials, Marks didn't settle for anything less than first.

The former Gophers standout and current assistant coach landed a personal-best jump of 47 feet, 2.25 inches to take top honors in the triple jump event and become Minnesota's first women's track and field athlete to make the U.S. Olympic roster.

Minnesota junior Heather Dorniden picked up her school-record seventh All-American nod and junior Liz Roehrig was the runner-up in the heptathlon this weekend as the Gophers women's track and field team claimed 13th - its highest finish ever - at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Des Moines, Iowa.

Dorniden's time of 2:05.56 in the 800 meters was good for fifth in the event - high enough to garner another All-American nod and break the Inver Grove Heights native's tie with thrower Rachel Lewis (1988-1991) for the most All-Americans as a member of the Gophers.

.LINCOLN, Neb. - As tornadoes ripped through central Nebraska leading up to the NCAA Midwest Track and Field Regionals in Lincoln, Gophers sophomore pole vaulter Alicia Rue created a windstorm of her own Friday.

Breaking a school record for the fourth time this season, Rue cleared a height of 13 feet, 11 3/4 inches to win her first NCAA Regional title.

"Winning Regionals was really exciting," Rue said. "I was not expecting it at all … I knew I had some work to do coming into the meet, but things turned out to go pretty well."

The Gophers men's track team has reached the last stop on the road to the Big Ten championship meet: home.

Minnesota will host the Minnesota Open at 2 p.m. tomorrow at Bierman Track.

Many of the Gophers' biggest stars will be taking the weekend off to rest for the conference championship.

The Big Ten conference championship meet will be held next Friday, Saturday and Sunday on campus at the University of Illinois-Champaign.

The Gophers will have the opportunity to improve upon last year's second place conference finish.

It's May.

A time when the sun, the birds and collegiate track stars all come seemingly out of nowhere to light up the summer.

Few collegiate track stars have come on as strongly this spring as 6-foot-3, 250-pound sophomore Aaron Studt.

The 19-year-old throwing standout, whom coach Phil Lundin calls "a great kid", has been just as great on the field for the Gophers this year, competing in the shot put, hammer throw and discus.