When the Ball State University track and field team travels to Bloomington today for the Gladstein Invitational, it will be a homecoming of sorts for head coach Randy Heisler.
Heisler spent 18 years coaching track and field at Indiana University before coming to Muncie last year.
"This will be my first time in the fieldhouse since I left, and I'll probably be seeing a lot of kids that I recruited on IU's team," Heisler said. "Actually, this will be the first time in 20 years that I'll have a meet in IU not caring about how the meet is run. I can just coach."
That's not the only reason Heisler will feel right at home in Bloomington. He still lives there, logging about four hours on the road every day.
However, Heisler said most of the teams competing have a much farther distance to travel.
"It's a non-scoring event, but there will be about 1,000 athletes there from all over the Midwest," Heisler said.
More than a dozen teams from neighboring states will participate. Among them are in-state schools Indiana, Butler University, University of Southern Indiana and University of Indianapolis.
Ball State enters the meet coming off a second-place finish at the Bowling Green Invitational on Jan. 18th in which it won three events and took second in three more.
Senior thrower Cara Collins said she expects the meet this weekend to be more challenging.
"It was good to see a couple conference schools and the competition was good," Collins said of the meet at Bowling Green. "This weekend, the competition will be up a level."
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