In a final tune-up before indoor conference championships, the UW men's and women's track and field teams will compete in the Wisconsin Open, which will be held Friday at the Shell.

The Badgers will host athletes from UW-Oshkosh and UW-La Crosse, along with many other open athletes, all of whom use the event as an opportunity to compete one final time before conference championships. Field events get underway at 3 p.m. with running events following at 3:30 p.m.

Although the meet is relatively minor compared to events in weeks past, it remains a valuable precursor for Wisconsin to the 2007 Big Ten Conference Indoor Championships to be held Feb. 24-25. Bloomington, Ind. is the site for the men's conference championships, while Champaign, Ill. is the women's locale.

"It's a preparation meet leading up to the Big Ten [Championships]," men's head coach Ed Nuttycombe said. "For a lot of the athletes it's an opportunity to put a finishing touch on their preparations for the championship part of the season."

Looking to further pad his résumé before the conference event is senior decathlete Joe Detmer. Detmer, who was not recruited out of high school and had to earn his spot on the track and field team, has rewritten many records during his tenure at UW, including setting the American record in the 1,000 meters three weeks ago, with a time of 2:30.86. His performance this winter has been enough to automatically qualify him for next month's NCAA Indoor Championship.

Detmer said that while many of the top athletes for UW may not participate this weekend, neither the quality nor the intensity of the competition will suffer.

"With Big Tens coming up, we've got a lot of distance guys [who] are looking to do pretty well," Detmer said. "We're hoping to do really well in the heptathlon, and just get points wherever else we can."

One especially important event, Nuttycombe says, will be the heptathlon.

"The heptathlon is going to be very important to us," Nuttycombe said. "That's probably the heart and soul of the team this year."

UW-Madison sophomore Chavon Robinson particularly likes the way this year's group works with and supports one another, and he foresees a successful month ahead.

"What I like most about our team is that we stick together really well," Robinson said. "Sometimes if you lose that sense of why you're here, it can become stressful and performances go downhill."