Over the hills and through the woods, to East Tennessee State University the Salukis go.

The top 15 members of the SIUC men’s track and field team traveled to Johnson City, Tenn. over the weekend to participate in the U. S. Air Invitational.

Despite the long ride on the road, eight season bests were produced.

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On Friday, high jumper Rodney White claimed fourth place out of 19 jumpers with a leap of 6-10 3/4.

Also on Friday, 1995 Missouri Valley Conference cross country champion Stelios Marneros finished eighth out of 14 runners in the 5,000 meter run with a time of 14:49.20.

Saturday, the duo of Jeremy and Joseph Parks ran the 3,000 meter event with times of 8:46.51 and 8:57.85 respectively. Jeremy finished 31 out of 110 runners while Joseph finished 49.

SIUC men’s track coach Bill Cornell said this unscored meet was designed to help athletes turn out top performances through tough competition.

A lot of people go there (to the U. S. Air Invite) with hopes of getting NCAA qualifying performances, but it’s still a little early in the year for that, Cornell said.

There were over 100 teams in competition on Friday and Saturday. Cornell said last years invite was not so large in number, and because of the large number of athletes this year, the team was easily confused.

To me, the meet was confusing, Cornell said.

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Cornell said the first day of the meet went three hours over its scheduled time.

That’s tough because the kids don’t know when to warm-up and they don’t want to warm up too soon, Cornell said. The meet has gotten too big.

Cornell had a mixed reaction on his teams results, and said the team may look for other events in the future.

That’s an awful long way to travel to not do well, he said. I wasn’t sure we were going to keep the meet on our schedule for the future. I think we’d like to find something a little closer to home so the entire team can compete.