Southeast women's team competes short-handed

The Southeast Missouri State women's track team that competed Saturday in the 26th annual Gatorade Classic was not the very best lineup that coach Joey Haines could field.

The lineup he hopes to have May 4 at the Ohio Valley Conference championships most certainly will include senior Natasha Fortenberry, who wasn't available this weekend for personal matters.

Southeast finished 4-2 on Saturday in the seven-team meet, which was scored as a series of dual meets for the first time.

Southern Illinois was 6-0, including a 108-59 decision against Southeast; and Illinois State's 5-1 record included an 84-57 win against the Redhawks.

SIU was led by junior Brittany Riley, who on Friday set meet and Stuber complex records in the hammer throw with a mark of 209 feet, 10 inches. She added titles Saturday in the discus (169-9) and shot put (44-2 3/4).

She equaled the total number of wins by Southeast, which had first-place finishes from senior Lindsay Zeiler in the 1,500 (4:43.98), sophomore Whitney Thomas in the 100 hurdles (14.82) and sophomore Rebecca Martin in the javelin (126-2).

Fortenberry was coming off a third-place finish in the 400 at Mississippi State, where she also was on Southeast's two third-place relay teams.

"Everything we do is cumulative toward the end of the season, whether it's the OVC or the NCAA," said Haines, whose women's program will be chasing its fifth straight OVC outdoors title. "Sometimes, on particular weekends, we're not doing everything to score the most points. We're doing what each athlete needs to do for the end of the season."

Southeast had its indoor OVC titles streak snapped at three this past February when Eastern Illinois took the women's championship. EIU will host the OVC outdoors meet.

Southeast will be without one of its weapons at the OVC meet for certain. Freshman Brittni Peck, who finished third in the 5,000 meters at the OVC indoors, has had her running career ended due to a foot injury.

"We're really young and we lost one of our top distance runners to injury," Haines said. "But we might win [the OVC] this year. We're not going to be favored but the other teams don't know if they can beat us yet."

New scoring

Haines said the Gatorade Classic went to a dual-meet scoring system this season because it allows teams to count the event as three meets as opposed to one.

For some of the schools in the field, that was an important factor in making sure the track programs had surpassed the minimum number of meets to qualify as Division I.

For schools like Southeast, which is on the lower end of the Division I scale in the number of sports offered, the track program's number of contests is crucial to the program's ability to stay at the Division I level.