With one week left before the Big 12 Championships in Lincoln, Neb., the ISU men’s and women’s track teams will compete in the UNI-Dome Open in Cedar Falls Friday.

While competing against members of Drake, Wisconsin and Northern Iowa, as well as a number of smaller division teams, such as Central College, Cornell and Buena Vista, the Cyclones main goal will be to prepare for next week.

“It’s a meet where we have people that want to get something in different than the conference meet, or they need to do some sharpening before the conference meet,” said men’s coach Steve Lynn. “It’s important in that aspect. Their track is a lot different than our track or Nebraska’s track, so we won’t do a lot of things up there.”

Among the runners competing in different races will be David Rotich, who won the mile run at last week’s Iowa State Classic. Rotich will be competing the 800-meter run this weekend.

Other runners doing different races will be the normal distance runners, who will run shorter races than normal.

“The distance guys are running a shorter distance than what they’ve been running just for some speed work, to get the legs turning over,” Lynn said.

Throwers Kendall Fogle and Chase Madison will work toward improvement for the conference meet.

“We’re sending both Chase [Madison] and Kendall [Fogle] up there to get another meet under their belt before the Big 12 [Championships],” said throws coach Dan O’Mara.

“It’s kind of to fine-tune some technical problems they’ve had from our classic, and hopefully just a little boost of confidence.”

The women’s team will send mostly freshmen hoping to gain experience.

“The whole group is pretty much freshmen, other than the kids that want to get one more race before [the] conference [championships],” said women’s coach Dick Lee. “It’s one of those progression-type things – to keep running faster and faster. Mostly this weekend’s just continual improvement.”

For the sprinters, coach Scott Roberts is also looking to give the younger runners experience, electing to leave more experienced runners, such as last week’s 800-meter run winner Ada Anderson, at home.

“We’re basically sending some sprinters and hurdlers who are younger kids mostly, who are just looking to get some experience before going to conference,” Roberts said.

“It’s good just because it’s at a level where some of those kids can really feel comfortable running, which is really good to give our young kids competition.”

As far as jumpers for both teams are concerned, only one jumper, Isi Oamen, will make the trip. The rest will look to have a good practice on Friday.

“My thought is we can get more work done at home right now in practice then we can going into that competition,” said jumps and vaults coach Ron McEachran. “We’re going to get more repetitions. I think we can get more volume here in practice.”

The first event is the men’s weight throw, starting at 2:00 p.m., with running events starting at 4:00 p.m. with men’s 60-meter hurdles.