The Missouri Valley Conferences’ best women’s indoor track teams will meet at the Illinois State Triangular in Normal today with Indiana State University leading the way as the reigning indoor champion of the MVC.

Although SIUC has never won the MVC Championship, they won five outdoor and indoor track and field titles in the past ten years while they were in the Gateway Conference and the field of competition is very similar to the newer MVC.

The 1995-96 Saluki women’s indoor track and field squad will open their season with optimism as a host of talent will return from last year, losing only three women to graduation.

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The loss of stars LaTonya Morrison, Jennie Horner and Debbie Daehler as women’s track coach, DeNoon said, will affect the team in individual events.

We are strong in nearly every event, DeNoon said.

If there was a weak event to point out, it would have to be distance. It’s no secret that we lost a lot from last year. It will be hard to replace the likes of Horner and Daehler immediately, he said.

DeNoon said one of the reasons this Illinois State Triangular meet is held is to see where the athletes are at in their performance levels.

If they don’t perform well, then it encourages them to get their act together and if they do perform well, then it says, hey, I’m doing well and I had better continue training like I have been training,’ DeNoon said.

DeNoon said without seeing performances in a meet, this squad is probably the best SIUC has had.

Looking at it (the squad) without any competition, I think it’s the best squad we’ve had here at SIUC, DeNoon said.

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Last year the Saluki women recorded a second place finish at the meet behind ISU and hope to capture the title this year.

From a squad of thirty-eight women, eleven freshmen join the squad and those who will make the trek to Normal, DeNoon said, need to make a major impact on this meet.

He also said the adjustment process for freshmen from high school to college is on an individual basis.

I think the adjustment is done on an individual basis, DeNoon said.

For some, they get scared to death and it takes them a while to adjust to the competition level and other kids view it as just another meet, he said.

The pressure on the freshmen, according to DeNoon, is light.

One of the things I said to them (freshmen) is that there are so many good people around the team right now, that when someone starts performing well, it should be a domino effect, DeNoon said.

We’re a very strong field event team and this meet starts out with field events, so by the time we get into the track area, we should have a lot of encouragement, DeNoon said.