Guest columnist Karen Schillinger talks about how food brings the Cornell track teams together.

Men's basketball graduated seniors Ryan Wittman and Jeff Foote have been "doing work" this summer, working out for various NBA teams in preparation for this month's draft and NBA Summer League. Meanwhile, another Cornell all-time great has been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. 

The men's track and field team will compete in the Cortland Invitational tomorrow while the women host Penn.

In track, athletes perform their training in cycles, sacrificing strong times for hard workouts, ultimately hoping to peak late in the season during the team’s most important meets. For the Red, the Heptagonal’s, ECAC and NCAA championships will be the definitive meets of the 2009-10 season. Judging by the Red’s performance at the two-day Bucknell Bison Outdoor Classic, Cornell’s track programs are well on their way to outstanding performances in the post season. Despite racing on weary legs after several weeks of hard workouts, both the women’s and men’s teams looked strong at Bucknell, picking up many individual and relay first-place finishes.

With less than a month remaining before the Ivy Heptagonals begin, both the women’s and men’s track teams are coming off of strong performances at Cornell’s Easter Weekend Open, and will look to step it up a gear in this weekend’s Bucknell Invitation.   

The men’s and women’s track teams will return from their Spring Break meets –– the UC Irvine Invitational and the Titan Twilight –– with sore muscles and tanned faces. But the Red returns from California endowed with more than just sunburns; both teams gained valuable experience in their first meets of the season, posted impressive results and put in a week of quality training in the California sunshine, hence the sore muscles.  

Competing in the final meet before Heps, the track and field teams put forth impressive performances last Saturday at Barton Hall in the Marc Deneault Invitational. Over 20 teams and 900 athletes participated in the weekend events while Deneault’s twin brother, Richard, and the rest of his family came to watch in commemoration of Marc Deneault ’01.

The track and field teams had a busy weekend with many impressive performances in the Multi Events II on Friday and the Robert Kane Invitational on Saturday –– both hosted by Cornell in Barton Hall. The men’s team also sent some athletes to the Armory in New York City for the continuation of the College Saturday Night series. The weekend resulted in several new freshmen records, school records, event wins and all time top-10 records.

Over the weekend, the track team teamed up with Penn’s track and field team at Franklin Field in Philadelphia for an international win. The Red represented the red, white and blue, as well as individually: both the men’s and women’s squads scored enough points to win the event on their own.

The biennial event was scored following traditional British scoring, with event winners notching one point for their team.

Of the 16 points scored by the American tag-team in the 16-3 win, 10 were scored by the Red.

Sophomore Adrienne Dannemiller won the 3000-m steeplechase in 9:02.40. The steeplechase is an international event that appears during the Olympics. The event includes 28 hurdle jumps and seven water jumps, which are 3.94 meters long.

Both the men’s and women’s track teams have been sleeping with the enemy this past week, metaphorically speaking. Cornell has been hosting the Oxford and Cambridge squads since Tuesday as they get set to compete in the traditional biennial Cornell-Penn vs. Oxford-Cambridge meet this weekend in Philadelphia. Those on the Red’s squad who do not make the trip to Franklin Field will travel this weekend to Cortland to compete in the Cortland Invitational.

For over a century, the Cornell track team has united with its counterpart at Penn to compete against the two British universities. The meet will be scored according to traditional British rules in which each event title will be worth one point. There are 19 total points that can be accumulated.