TJ Leverentz/Winonan

The Warriors ended the indoor track season at the NCAA Indoor Championship in Winston-Salem, N.C. March 15.

Elisa Kupferschmid and the 4×400 relay team made up of Kelsey Bethke, Katie Bagley, Taylor Vogel and Catherine Whitcomb were the five Warriors who earned the trip to Nationals.

Warrior head coach Mason Rebarchek said, “It’s a great achievement when you can make it to nationals.”

The 4×400 relay team posted a time of 3:49.13 on their way to a ninth place finish. The Warriors finished only 0.03 seconds behind the school record and 2.62 seconds from finishing the indoor season as an All-American relay team.

Whitcomb said, “It’s fun seeing your collective hard work pay off like it did for us this year.”

Kupferschmid finished 13th in the weighted throw. She totaled a distance of 16.72 meters. Kupferschmid also posted a distance of 18.034 meters earlier in the season, which is the seventh best in school history.

Kupferschmid attempted a more difficult throwing motion at nationals. Rebarchek said they decided to do the three-turn motion as opposed to the two-turn motion. “She just didn’t get it that time,” Rebarchek said.

The Warriors are scheduled to begin the outdoor season Saturday in Rock Island, Ill. The early forecast calls for sunny skies and a high of 46 degrees.

As for Winona, the forecast calls for the highs to range from the upper 20s to mid 30s throughout the week. Rebarchek said the track is not ready yet but hopes the Warriors will be practicing outside no later than April 1.

“The weather is easily the biggest difference from indoors to outdoors,” Rebarchek said, “It’s always 70 degrees, calm and dry indoors.”

According to Rebarchek the sprinters are the most affected by the cold.

“We won’t have them run in anything colder than 35 degrees. The rest are okay; they just need to bundle up,” Rebarchek said.

Another difference Rebarchek pointed out is the size of the track outdoors. “When people think of track they think of the outdoor track. It’s where we all grew up running on, and it’s much bigger than the track at a field house,” Rebarchek said.

Three NSIC teams are ranked in the pre-outdoor season top 25. Wayne State is ranked 11th and is followed by 18th-ranked University of Mary and by Sioux Falls, who is ranked 22nd.

On top of getting the team ready to transition from the indoor season to the outdoor season, the coaching staff is busy with recruitment.

Rebarchek starts recruiting athletes when they enter their junior year of high school. Rebarchek and his staff sent out many letters of intent and received several verbal and written commitments last month.

“One issue with track being a spring sport is that you have a lot of later commitments,” Rebarchek said. “You have athletes that still have their senior season that may not end until June, so it can be a quick turn around at times for everybody involved.”

The Warriors will have eight outdoor meets in the next month. The NSIC Outdoor Championship will be held in Winona on May 9.