Sean Hartnett Talks With Gopher Coach Phil Lundin

Gopher Coach Phil Lundin talks with DtB correspondent Sean Hartnett about the Big Ten Indoors.

DTB: Fifth place, so close to third that it hurts, but a pretty good meet for a young team.

PL: Well when you look at statistics, due to injuries and a red-shirt here and there, we only had 18 returning points from last year’s second place team indoors. Being a Norwegian, I was a little bit dour in my prognostications, but I was hoping that maybe if we had a great, great two days we might be able to be an upper-division team. The kids came through. Not that we performed great, but the kids that were supposed to do it, did it. We have a young group of distance runners, all freshmen and sophomores. Coach Plasencia has done a great job with them. They were eighth in NCAAs in cross country. Our multi-eventers are all freshmen and sophomores, and we had three places in the heptathlon today. We have a great group of young throwers, and all our vaulters are freshmen and sophomores. The future looks brighter. We have some holes to fill, and it is a neverending quest to catch the Badgers, and someday we’ll do it again.

DTB: Your team picked up some great competitive experience in Madison, and next year you’ll have a lot of returning points.

PL: Yes, everybody returns, and we got some kids that were injured or red-shirting that will be back, and with a couple of incoming recruits next year. We anticipate to go after the Badgers again next year. That is our goal.

DTB: You have a number of athletes on the provisional bubble for nationals.

PL: It is hard to say what we’ll do because they are so young, and there are a lot of provisional guys with nothing sure for the nationals. You wonder if you should continue to push the indoor for another week, or maybe some rest and then training for outdoors. We’ll see how they feel after a meet like this, and what "last chances" are available, and we’ll plan accordingly.

Photo Courtesy of University of Minnesota