University of Minnesota Athletics
Bingle Meets with Media
4/26/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Track & Field
MINNEAPOLIS - As the Golden Gophers prepare to split the squad at four meets this week, director of women's track & field and cross country Matt Bingle checks in with the media with team updates and expectations.
Gopher Sports: On last weekend at the Kansas Relays:
Matt Bingle: Obviously it was great to win, and that was a goal going into it. The team did a good job of buying in to that. You could see that they were fighting to win. The meet director approached me and told me that he loves our team because he could see the way they fought and how much they wanted to win. That was nice to hear. Beyond that, there were a lot of great individual performances. The wind played a part in some of those, and some of the not-as-great performances were also probably because of the wind.
Agnes Esser stood out with a nice season-best in the discus, and the 4x100m relay and the 4x400m relay both had season-bests as well. It was a good weekend for the 400m hurdles group, too. Lindsey Smits has shown great improvement, and Rachel Schow had a big breakthrough with some things technically as well.
We went 1-2 in a lot of events, so that was great to see. The high jump went great for Taylor Wiebke and Heta Tuuri. I really thought they did a great job taking another step. Overall as a team, we took a nice step after having a weekend off. People are getting healthier. We just have to stay focused these next two weeks here.
GS: On goals for the next two weeks...
MB: I like where we're at right now, but we have to stay focused and make sure we all keep doing our jobs on a daily basis. It's easy to get distracted this time of the year. We have to have everybody all in. There's a lot to be done here.
GS: On this week's competition...
MB: We just want to go into this weekend and try to take another step, keep progressing while coming out of it healthy. The competition we face in most events is going to take a step up, especially for the group traveling to Texas, so we want to be ready for that and respond to it well. Step up, focus on yourself, and execute in a competitive situation.
The Gophers are headed to the Drake Relays, Kip Janvrin Open, Janis Rider Invitational, and Longhorn Invitational this week. Minnesota's distance runners are racing at Drake and Simpson College and the sprints, hurdles, throws, and jumps corps is headed to Austin, Texas, while members of the team also remain local to compete at Macalester College.
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Players Mentioned
