Frigid temperatures in Champaign seemed to find their way indoors over the weekend as the men’s track and field team fell cold to Illinois and Eastern Illinois in the quadrangular meet.

The Fighting Illini kept the title at home winning the quad meet with 72 points. EIU placed second with 44 points and SIUC finished with 34 overall points ahead of North Central College from Naperville, which had 2 overall points.

The women’s track and field team also came up short to Illinois and Purdue at the Purdue Invitational in W. Lafayette, IN.

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Illinois led the way with 80 points, Purdue held a close second scoring 75 points and SIUC scored 54 points. Toledo and North Central College finished in fourth and fifth place.

Men’s coach Bill Cornell said he was disappointed in his team’s overall performance.

The biggest excitement I think was Cameron Wright having a good day and going 7’2 1/4, he’s starting to find himself again, Cornell said.

Cornell said having five weeks off between semesters, his team was able to perform well the first meet of the new year, but he said the team went flat after that. He also said, that in recect years, the team has performed much the same.

We tried to ease off of them this year, and didn’t work them that hard, but it still had the same effect, Cornell said.

Cornell said his team is really feeling down about its loss to Eastern Illinois University.

There was no way EIU should have beaten us, he said.

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Women’s coach Don DeNoon had a similar reaction to his team’s overall performance.

Our kids as an overall team seemed to be quite flat, DeNoon said. We didn’t have the spark we had the previous week.

DeNoon explained the performances over the weekend were reflective of the time spent training. He said the team was somewhat fatigued going into the Purdue Invite.

Like Cornell, DeNoon felt the Christmas break played a part in the team’s performance.

You have to break athlete’s down before you can start building them up. The break had an affect on us and it was hard to find the energy because Illinois and Purdue started training on the 2nd of Jan.; so they were already through that (breaking down period), DeNoon said.

DeNoon did get top performances from senior Katrina Daniels, who won the 400-meter sprint with a time of 56.94, and senior Joy Williamson, who finished 2nd in the triple jump and long jump with distances of 37′ 9 1/2 and 18′ 4 1/2 respectively.

DeNoon also said sophomore distance runner Kelly French, who finished 3rd in the mile with a time of 5.06.64, ran well.

DeNoon hopes the women will be ready to give another good performance at the Indiana Invitational in Bloomington, IN.

We didn’t get just blown away, DeNoon said. We had relatively decent performances, and we just have to come back in two weeks and do what we’re capable of doing again.