Eastern will begin to defend its 2001 Ohio Valley Conference championship when the men’s track and field team will start winter competition on Sunday against Indiana State.

The Panthers were supposed to start their season competing in the Illinois State Early Bird meet, but the team has decided to take a match up against Indiana State this weekend.

High expectations do not seem to faze the Panthers, as they will be the team every other school in the OVC will be shooting at this year. But the team and head coach Tom Akers will not shy away from this distinction, instead they want to relish it and find motivation from it.

“Our goal is to win the OVC every year; this is what we train for and work towards,” said Akers. “We will set our sights on that goal again this year and hope to achieve it.”

The first meet of the season will be used by the Panthers as a measuring stick to see where they stand this early in the year.

Facing a complete team such as Indiana State will be a good way for Eastern to see how they stack up against tough competition.

One aspect of the winter season that could be difficult for the team will be how hey will manage their athletes who just got done competing in cross country.

Akers believes the situation can be handled, and he looks forward to seeing these players run this season. Once such athlete is senior Kyle O’Brien who led this year’s cross country team, and will be expected to run well for the track team as well as one of their distance runners.

“We will look at guys like (Kyle) O’Brien for senior leadership this year, but it is tough on that crew. They have had little downtime and now they need to start to familiarize themselves with track again and not cross country,” said Akers.

Akers also looks forward to see how his team will far against Indiana Sate at the beginning of the season. Eastern’s coaching staff will be looking at the team closely early on just to see how they will fare as the season goes along.

“It will be good to play against Indiana State because they are an excellent squad who are always at the top of the Mountain Valley Conference,” said Akers. “They are represented well in every area of their team, and they are excellent competition. Every time we face them we can expect the score to be close, usually between five to 10 points.”