All the Indiana men’s distance team has done this season is have two athletes win Big Ten Track athlete of the week — while producing some of the best times in the nation — so its no surprise that the IU women’s team hasn’t received to much attention.

Well, after the Gladstein Invitational this past weekend, that may be change.

Kelsey Duerksen and Breanne Ehrman lead a women’s distance team that is putting up very impressive times and are beginning to steal some of the headlines from the men.

“The guys team is a little bit ahead of us, each year is getting better and we’re just trying to climb up there, I think we’re getting close.” Duerksen said.

Duerksen came in second in the 3k, falling short by just five hundredth’s of a second. She was also apart of a 4×800 meter relay team that missed out on the Fieldhouse record by two seconds.

Her training partner Breanne Ehrman came in fifth in the 3k and was also part of the 4×8 win. Also on the relay team were seniors Chelsea Blanchard and Caitlin Engel.  Ehrman believes having a teammate like Duerksen has been very useful.

“Its great, its really helpful, and we really help each other move forward.”

Running unattached in the 3k were Samantha Ginther and Erica Ridderman, both Indiana distance runners who came in third and fourth respectively.

To go along with an impressive performance, Helene Delone and Molly Winters finished 1-2 in the 5k, which saw Delone win by an impressive 19 seconds.

Aireonna Bailey came in third in the 60-meter dash and then later on won the 200, Samantha Gwinn won the 600, and IU took second andthird place in the pole vault thanks to Kelsie Ahbe and Sophie Gutermuth.

Although overshadowed, the men also put together some good times.

Normally a 400 and 600 runner, Ryan Hindes ran in his first collegiate 800 meter run, 1: 53, which put him only a couple of seconds behind teammate De’sean Turner who ran a 1:51 and came in first place.

With a 7:58 3k, Andy Bayer was still a bit disappointed, looking to run 10-15 seconds faster Bayer didn’t have the race he envisioned, but was still able to find some positives out of the performance.

“It was a little disappointing, we wanted to be out quite a bit faster, we wanted to be like 4:10-4:12 through the mile and our pace was pretty slow, like 4:20, but I had a good second half of the race,” Bayer said.

Along with Bayer, other solid performances included Olu Olamigoke’s win in the long jump and a second place finish in the triple jump. Wins from Travis Jaurequi in the high jump and from the 4×400 meter relay team that was comprised of Kind Butler, Tyler Sult, Chris Vaughn, and Ryan Hindes.

Coach Helmer wasn’t totally satisfied with his team’s performance but wanted to put it in the rear view mirror and look forward to the next couple of weeks.

“ We now got to just continue to work, continue to put things in place, continue to sharpen up a little bit and prepare to put some good times up in the next couple of weeks,” Helmer said.

It will be up to the team to listen to coach’s message as no one Indiana faces is going to sit down for them.