By
Francisco Merced
Arizona Daily Wildcat
After an impressive showing at the Texas Relays last weekend, the UA women's track and field team moved up three spots to claim the No. 3 ranking in the Trackwire Top 25 poll this week.
The team's on-field leader, junior Brianna Glenn, won the Invitational 100-meter dash in 11.21 seconds and was rewarded with the Pacific 10 Conference's Player of the Week award.
Following the win, the junior moved into the No. 1 spot atop the collegiate rankings for the event.
Glenn and her fellow Wildcats will travel to the Bay Area today to participate in the Brutus Hamilton Memorial Invitational, which is being hosted by California.
At the midway point of the year, UA has now shifted focus to fine-tuning aspects of its running as they head into the meet.
"We're getting to that time of the season where we're looking for qualifiers," UA head coach Dave Murray said.
Assistant coach Fred Harvey said the meet will be a good chance to gauge his athletes' chances against the likes of other Pac-10 schools such as No. 1 Southern California and Stanford.
"I'm using (this meet) more as a high-volume training sight," Harvey said.
The invitational is a scoring meet that will host eight schools, four from the Pac-10. This ideology is what will drive the athletes for the meet, as declared by sophomore Matt Lea.
"We're going to continue practicing hard through the meet and get ready to peak for the (end of season) championships," Lea said.
Lea along with his other 4x400m relay teammates came out and established themselves early in the season as their first race together produced the seventh-fastest time in school history in 3 minutes, 7.74 seconds. With continued improvement the team feels a possible school record within reach.
However, the highlight of the meet maybe a match-up between No. 1 Glenn and Southern California junior Angela Williams, the defending NCAA 100m champion.
"The top three runners in the 100 will be there this weekend," Harvey said. "That should be a great race to watch."
Completing the trio will be William's teammate, senior Candace Young, whose time of 11.22 ranks her No. 2 nationally. William's time of 11.23 places her third.
