After being on a break that gave them just five days of preparation before their first meet of the season, the Illinois women’s track and field team didn’t quite know what to expect going into Saturday’s Indiana Invitational in Bloomington, Ind.

The results were mostly positive, as numerous Illini achieved personal bests against multiple Big Ten schools, each of which had already competed in at least one meet this season.

“I thought it went well, for our opener I thought it was pretty good,” Illini head coach Tonja Buford-Bailey said.

Sophomore Tamika Robinson showed no signs of a slow start, achieving three personal bests in three top-five finishes. Robinson placed second in the 60 meters (7.58), third in the 60-meter hurdles (8.56) and fifth in the 200 meters (25.23).

In the 60-meter final, Robinson found herself facing four of her teammates, and the Illini took second, third, fourth and fifth places behind Michigan senior Tiffany Ofili, a three-time NCAA hurdles champion.

“It was fun to have all my teammates next to me,” Robinson said of the race.

The Illini placed second in three other events. Sophomore Melissa Bates finished second in the 400 meters (57.19) and sophomore Jessica Penney leaped an indoor personal best 19 feet, 7 inches en route to a runner-up finish in the long jump.

The second place 4×400 meter relay (3:46.43) was made up of senior transfer Deserea Brown and freshmen Ryisha Boyd, Jayla McArthur and Latoya Griffith. Finishing behind Michigan by a tenth of a second, Brown was proud of her new teammates.

“It was pretty good, we had a lot of freshmen that we ran that went out really hard and kept taking it to them. It was good they showed a lot of heart,” Brown said.

Overall, this is a young Illini team, and Buford-Bailey knows that they will need to keep improving.

“I think what it gives us is an idea of what we need to be working on in the next couple of weeks,” Bugord-Bailey said of the meet. “It’s hard to tell where you are now this early, but I think it does help us to focus on specifics.”

The Illini now are looking forward to their first home meet on Saturday, the Carle/Health Alliance Invitational held at the UI Armory.

“We got a home meet coming up, and again we just want to go out and improve our marks this week,” Buford-Bailey said. “At least we have a target now, we kind of have a baseline so just want to try to get better next week than we were this week.”