The Illinois women’s track and field team’s regular season will come to a close this weekend. The team left Thursday morning to travel to Berkeley, Calif., for the California Collegiate Challenge.

Although the team will have four more meets after the challenge, all of those will be Big Ten, NCAA and United States Track and Field championship meets. Because of the timing of the meet, the team is looking to make sure everything is in place for the rest of the season. Twenty-four of the athletes will travel to the West Coast to compete in the team’s full array of events.

Head coach Gary Winckler said on Wednesday that the athletes will be returning to their primary events. Winckler had members of the team participating in events outside of their normal routine to get in some conditioning and speed work.

“We’re going to be doing all of the throws, jumps, sprints and hurdle events,” Winckler said. “We probably won’t be running the (4×400-meter relay), but other than that we’re going to be doing just about everything. We’re pretty much honing in on events we’ll run at the Big Ten meet.”

At last week’s Kansas Relays the team was faced with stiff competition, but still fared extremely well. The team took the Outstanding Women’s Team of the Meet, even though top collegiate programs and Olympians were in the field. Winckler expects a similarly elite field this weekend, but is still expecting the team to place well.

“I talked to the meet director this afternoon and he said that there was a lot better turnout than he expected,” Winckler said. “I think it’s going to be a really good meet, but we’re looking forward to it.”

The Illini have already earned regional qualifying times, heights and distances in many of the events that they had wanted to going into the meet. However, they still are looking to qualify for even more events to ensure a strong field of athletes going into the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.

Injuries and other setbacks have stopped some of the athletes from reaching qualifying marks in some of their events. Winckler, however, said that he is confident that the challenge will yield another ideal meet for qualifying marks. The temperature and wind conditions should be conducive to a positive outcome.

For the portion of the team that has already achieved its qualifying marks, the meet will bring more fine-tuning work. Even after athletes have already qualified for their event, the coaching staff looks for continued improvement and progress.

“This will just be like a tune-up race for some,” assistant coach Tonja Buford-Bailey said. “We just want to get another go around at it.”

For the seniors that are competing in the challenge, it marks the end of their final regular season with the Illini. The coaching staff was quick to curb any ideas that the race will be seen as a “last hurrah” for any of the athletes.

They expect the team to perform at its peak throughout the rest of the championship season as well.

“They won’t think of it that way,” Buford-Bailey said. “They’ll be thinking about the (Big Ten) conference and (NCAA) regionals. That will be more important to them.”

The challenge will start today and conclude on Saturday.

The team will then come back and have a two-week practice period before heading to State College, Pa., for the Big Ten Outdoor Championships which will run from May 11-13.