With the arrival of spring sun, many students look forward to lounging in the grass and relaxing.For the track and field team, it’s time to go to work.
“[The team dynamic] changes big time for us because we are a little bit more built for the outdoor campaign,” said Head Coach Dave Dopek. “Indoor we only have two throwing events, shot put and the weight throw. When we get outdoor we add the discus, we add the javelin. We have two of the better javelin throwers in the nation on the women’s side of the program.”
Outdoor events also bring a sense of familiarity to the team, and give the team “the opportunity to run different events” that the student-athletes “are more comfortable with,” Dopek said.
“You know, the majority of our athletes they may have been in high schools or states that had some sort of indoor,” said Dopek, who is in his first year as head coach. “[But] everybody has outdoor. That’s what everybody does.”
It also can effect the events that occur both indoors and outdoors.
“Sprint wise, we don’t like being cramped up inside,” Dopek said. “So the whole idea that we can get on a much bigger track, have our own lanes, I definitely think you’ll see that our quarter-milers are going to do a whole lot better.”
While the only indoor distance event was the 3k, the outdoor season brings in the 5k, 10k and 3k steeplechase. With the additional events and a different setting, running outside also means readjusting.
“It’s one thing to run indoor where you’re warm and you feel like you can be faster,” said Dopek. “But then when you get outdoor and you have the different dimensions, different landmarks that you should be feeling a certain way at a certain point and if you’ve been running indoor you kind of lose connection with that.”
Even if the connection is not there immediately, just being outside is a whole lot better than practicing at an indoor facility.
“You just feel better outdoor,” said Dopek. “You don’t have bad air wherever you’re going. You’re not stuck inside some dingy field house.”
The rising and falling Chicago temperatures affect each event differently. For the throwers, competing outside in the cold simply means adding a few extra layers. But for the runners it is another story.
“The distance runners, they’ll complain because it’s cold and they feel like it’s okay to complain, but it’s fine for them because we don’t want them overheating anyway,” said Dopek, a former sprinter at DePaul. “Sprinters, we’re a little finicky about our weather. We practice outside. If it’s 40, we can practice outside, but we won’t do top speed work just because I like to keep our hamstrings healthy.”
While the practice routines may change with the weather, the team’s relentless pursuit of record-breaking times and distances remains the same.
“I don’t expect us to change our assault on any of our school records,” said Dopek, who himself holds five school records and was the first DePaul national champion. “My expectation is that we should probably break another 10 this year, just this outdoor season. It’s nice to get rid of the 80s and as many of the 90s as possible to show that the program’s doing well.”
So far, they are on the right track, already breaking eight records this season. On the women’s side, Melissa Fraser set the outdoor hammer record at 55.60m, while Lindsey Holden set the indoor 400m dash with a time of 55.83 and Toni Salvatore completed a record indoor mile run time of 4:55.64.
Chris Kyles set the indoor 60m dash record with a time of 6.83, Edin Pasalic owns the indoor 500m record with a time of 1:03.7 and Matt Graham took the indoor 3,000m spot with a time of 8:09.75. Tim Nedow had a record indoor shot put throw of 19.18m, in addition to the outdoor discus record with a throw of 55.46m.
Meanwhile, the 4x400m men’s relay team is well on their way to breaking the previous record of 3:12.96.
“For their first race of the outdoor season they ran a whole lot faster than I really thought they were going to run. It’s probably one of the faster opening 4x4s that we’ve run since I’ve been here,” said Dopek. “It was a little cold, but to see them run 3:16 so effortlessly was nice.they only have to drop three and a half seconds. That’s a lot, but that’s a second a person.so it’s possible. I would love for them to be able to do that.