BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - The Indiana State Track & Field teams will hit the road and travel to Indiana University for the Billy Hayes Invitational this Friday for one last tune-up meet before the Missouri Valley Conference Championships next weekend.
 
Entering competition on Thursday, the Sycamore men rank 15th in the Great Lakes Regional rankings while the ISU women maintain their ranking of 13th. In the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Event Squad rankings, the Sycamore men's pole vaulters cracked the top-25, sitting at 22nd nationally with an average vault of 4.81m (15-09.50).
 
USTFCCCA Event Squad rankings places a rank order to a program's "squad" of athletes in a particular event, using the cumulative season-best qualifying marks from a team's top-four ranked athletes on the national descending-order list. As with the national descending-order list for qualifying and seeding purposes, marks are subject to be converted due to track size and/or altitude. A team must have four or more athletes with a valid season-best mark recorded with TFRRS to achieve a ranking in a particular event.
 
Last weekend at the Drake Relays, the distance duo of Akis Medrano and Quentin Pierce had strong showings on the track for the blue and white. Medrano posted a seventh place finish in the men's 5K during the distance carnival on day one of the Relays, recording the second-best time in school history of 14:10.96, just .16 away from John Mascari's school record. He owns the top time in the conference by seven seconds.
 
In a strong field of the men's 1500-meter run last Friday, Pierce represented ISU well. The senior earned a fifth place finish in the event behind a time of 3:47.86, only .13 away from a career-best. After his performance, he improved his fifth overall time in the conference.
 
Matthew Lewis-Banks will also race one last time before conference at IU in the 110-meter hurdles. The freshman hurdler is coming off a strong performance at the Drake Relays where he ran the eighth-fastest time in the preliminary event at 14.15, just .03 away from his career-best. He owns the second-fastest time in the Valley and is 42nd in the East Region.
 
On the women's side, Ayanna Morgan and Brooke Moore will look to lead the way on the track. Morgan will compete in the 100-meter hurdles on Friday, an event in which she holds the second-best time in the MVC of 13.67 from the Ole Miss Classic.
 
Distance standout Brooke Moore will race in the fast section of the women's 1500-meter run on Friday evening. Moore owns the top time in the Valley in the 1500-meter run with her time of 4:23.70 from the Ole Miss Classic and she is also 48th in the East.
 
Senior Caitlyn Redmon will look to improve her mark in the long jump at the Billy Hayes Invitational, an event in which she owns the fifth-best mark in the conference of 5.90m (19-04.25) from the Ole Miss Classic.
 
Action at IU will begin at 1 p.m. ET with the women's hammer throw and men's javelin throw, while track events will get started at 4 p.m. with the preliminary hurdle rounds.
 
For the latest information on the Sycamore Track & Field teams, make sure to check out GoSycamores.com. You can also find the team on social media including Facebook and Twitter.