The Illini women pulled out an impressive second place finish at the Big Ten Indoor Championships last weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. The women could not catch Michigan – who won the event – but edged out everyone else in the Big Ten, finishing slightly in front of Minnesota.

The goal for the women coming in was to perform well as a team and put up solid scores. That is exactly what they did.

“Overall it was a great team effort,” sophomore sprinter Carlene Robinson said. “Everyone really contributed as much as they possibly could and had good running times. We all were trying to do our bests and that’s what we wanted to do coming into the meet.”

Robinson finished with a personal best in the 600-meter run. She placed second in the race with a new school record time of 1:30.98. Freshman Pam Wolf padded Illinois’ stats in the 600 with a third place finish behind Robinson.

This wouldn’t be the only event that the Illini would put more than one person into the top three slots.

Junior Yvonne Mensah came into the meet participating in five different events, taking first place in two of them, and adding to an Illini sweep of the triple jump.

“Yvonne did everything we asked of her this weekend,” head coach Gary Winckler said. “Trying to compete in five different events is an extremely hard task to do. She scored in all five for us, so you really can’t ask anything more of her.”

Mensah won the Big Ten title in the 60-meter dash with a new personal best time, and a new track record of 7.38. She also helped Illinois sweep the field in the triple jump along with fellow Illini, senior Nina Henson and junior Kristina Jones. Respectively, these three finished atop the standings in the triple jump.

Sophomore LaNeisha Waller matched Mensah’s new track record as she set her own Camp Randall time in the 60-meter high hurdles. Waller was up against an extremely competitive finals heat, yet still managed to record a new personal-best and provisional qualifying time of 8.28. The heat had five provisional qualifying marks in all.

“LaNeisha was fantastic,” Winckler said. “We knew she was ready to break the 8.30 mark, and she just came out here and ran a great race. She has a very bright future ahead of her.”

In the distance events, junior Cassie Hunt finished second in the mile with a season-best and provisionally qualifying time of 4:45.02.

She recorded another provisional mark of 16:37.66 to place seventh in a very competitive 5,000-meter finals heat that produced eight provisional qualifying times and three automatic qualifiers.

“This event was really good for us as a team because we had ups and downs in the whole meet, but we still held on in the last half hour,” said Sophomore Camile Robinson, who took the bronze medal in the 400-meter dash with a 55.29.

“It ended up being a very successful meet,” head coach Gary Winckler said. “We knew that it was going to be extremely hard for anyone to catch Michigan, but we scored a lot more than anticipated and exceeded all of our goals.”