You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson. Cast folks. Galen Clavier joining you here. It is the 17th of April. And one day after Indiana got some more good news in the basketball portal on the men's side, we're going to talk about that to start off this show real quick and dive into a bunch of other content. We had a bunch of content coming up throughout the course of this week and I hope you enjoy it. We we had Courtney Cronin on
you. You either watched or listened hopefully to that podcast beforehand. We've got Rachel Brown, who is one of the commentators for the Little 500 broadcast coming up later on in this show. And of course Little Five week is this week, the the world's greatest College weekend back again here in Bloomington as the women's race is going to be taking place on the 19th the
men's race on Saturday the 20th. Rachel going to be helping to commentate the women's race alongside Zion Brown, Katie Capusto, Riley Woodall and Kara Adams, so be sure to tune in. That's a 4:00 start to the broadcast, followed by the race very shortly afterwards. And then on. Saturday, it'll be the men's race with the broadcast starting at 2:00. You can find those@broadcast.iu.edu. Just go to broadcast.iu.edu, You'll be able to find the links from there.
And yeah, I think if you haven't watched the broadcast before, I'm biased 'cause I produced the broadcast. But I think it's a really good show and it's a really fascinating event if you've never been to little 500, or if you went and you were in an altered state of mind when you went. It's a really exciting athletic event and and there's there's great competitors, great athletes participating and even if you know nothing about
cycling, it's a lot of fun. So TuneIn to little 500 broadcast again, broadcast.iu.edu 4:00 Friday of this week, 2:00 Saturday. Before we get to our conversation with Rachel, I wanted to talk a little bit about the news that's been going on with IU over the course of the last couple of what really about the last week.
Some good news coming down the Pike with IU finally getting some Portal signings and a couple of really impressive looking players coming in. Of course the news I think it was late last week that Miles Rice gonna be joining IU was a freshman guard at Washington State and you know some really impressive metrics for a freshman 6, three, 180 lbs.
So you know is built you know in a way that you know has some athleticism, was in the top 300 in assist rate was among the players that played the most minutes in the country. I think it was 100, like basically 210 minutes in the country as far as total percentage was concerned and was a player that really generated a lot of of defensive stops, had a lot of steals. And you look at his statistics offensively and and clearly from a shooting perspective still a
work in progress. As you know he shot about 28% from three but shot 51% from 2 and looks like a very good free throw shooter as well. So you know that looks like the player that Indiana's going to roll with as their starting point guard coming into this season.
And I think that that's about as good of a landing as you could get overall in the portal as Rice only a freshman hypothetically would have multiple years remaining in Bloomington. And then of course the news today or I guess yesterday, technically I'm recording this right on the tail end of of Tuesday the 16th.
But the news that Omar Balo, the senior out of Arizona is going to be coming to Indiana and this is a really it's on the one hand it's exactly the type of player that you'd expect Mike Woodson to get out of the portal. On the other hand, this is a really exciting player. This is a player who according to several transfer portal ranking systems is ranked first. Like the the most sought after big. At least maybe not for some player.
For some teams who who play at a smaller size, maybe not the type of player they're looking for. But Indiana, as we know, loves to play through the post under Mike Woodson and Ballow's numbers are are just awesome. I mean, this is a guy who was basically top 200 in Offensive rating. He was one of the most efficient shooters in the entire game of basketball. He was literally a top 20 rebounder in the country. Both defensive and offensive rebounding didn't turn the ball over that much.
Shot 66% from the field, which is ludicrous. Drew a lot of fouls. Blocked a lot of shots, like the classic rim protector scorer combo that you know that Mike Woodson loves. Not a great free throw shooter, but you can't have everything. And you know, as the joke has been, he'll fit right in. IUT I'm mostly kidding, but I know a lot of people have gotten upset about the free throws over time. But no, both of these players really good gets for Mike Woodson and you know, clearly
the nil money is working. And I tip my cap to Mike Woodson and the and the staff because we talked a lot on this podcast about how difficult it can be if you look at what little evidence we've had up to this point. But there there at least has been some evidence for leading players like to to make them want to come to teams that are not coming off of NCAA tournament appearances. And you know, the message seems to be resonating as Indiana has other visits that are going on
right now. And I think you got to like Indiana's overall chances with a couple of those players and and
these are high caliber players. And you know, if you think about the way that the cycle has progressed over the course of the last month and a half, maybe two months, you know, if you go back to February 16th, things are about at their lowest ebb in Bloomington as far as the perception of the basketball program and where things are AT. And you know, Indiana has just lost on the road to Purdue and they're in the midst of what would be a four-game losing streak and a lot of questions
being asked about everything. And then obviously the next couple of weeks happen the losing continues and it really feels like things are falling apart now you know how much of that was was rumor how much of that is fact. You know what was obvious and we we talked about before there was something wrong with the way the team was was playing and gelling and then that got to some degree fixed over the course of the
last few games of the season. So coming into the off season, the question was, well a can Mike Woodson and his staff retain the players that they want to retain on the roster? And that was always the first hurdle in my mind that Indiana was going to have to jump over. And Indiana seems like they've retained all the players that they wanted to keep.
Obviously you had a couple of defections, but you look at the fact that you've been able to hang on to not just Trey Galloway, not just Malik Renew, but also Mackenzie and Bako. That provides a real solid core of players that played a lot of minutes last year for this IU team. And you retain some depth pieces as well. Obviously Gabe Cuff's still on the roster, you know, so that
look that that was a good sign. And so you come out of that hurdle and you say, all right, well, you don't have a very stock roster at that point. What 6-7 players? So you know, how do you fill the void of the players that you have to go get that are going to have to fill at least a couple of starting roles with Khalil Ware leaving and Indiana's managed to fill some holes in the starting line up as it looks like they've acquired their center and it looks like they've
acquired their point guard. And now the big question is you know where does Indiana go next? And you know I would look at it like you know, Scott has always talked about on the not always but like basically since last year the idea that getting Khalil Ware in the portal was a a home run type of get. But then you look holistically at the way that Indiana's portal year went last year and it really didn't deliver what the team needed. It's hard to say.
I mean you know at this point Indiana's transfer class right now is ranked number one overall. Evan Mayakawa has that ranking. That can change. But the fact that Indiana's pulled in two starter caliber players we you know with their their portal activity you have to tip your cap to the coaching staff and and to to Hoosiers connect and and the nil collective that you know that helps make these things possible these days. I mean Indiana's figured out a way to step up and they've also
been able to sell a vision. We as much as we've talked about the vision selling and how difficult that can be to to Rice and to borrow that vision clearly resonated in a way that they felt comfortable with. Obviously there are still some concerns and you know, people have expressed concerns about where's the outside shooting because that is clearly something that Indiana needs to get better at.
And clearly you need to be able to go out, get a player who at the very least can compliment the type of shooter that Mackenzie and Bako became at the end of the year. I mean, you know, over the last basically half of the season and maybe be able to also free up Trey Galloway so Galloway can get back into his rhythm and and maybe Galloway ends up shooting more like his, you know, more like his junior year as opposed
to how he shot last year. So there's still work to be done and you know the 3rd and final hurdle once you get past the portal and again, really good work so far, but but clearly a couple of more pieces need to be added to make this a complete team. But you get through that and and that final hurdle and I think the thing that's going to probably have a lot of IU fans still withholding the type of enthusiasm that they generally will show unabashedly.
What's the chemistry look like with this team. You know, how do the new players interact and and create chemistry very quickly with players that are already playing for IU. And frankly a team that didn't look like it had a lot of chemistry for most of the season. And I think that that's ultimately going to be one of the two big question marks as far as the Encore product that just fundamentally aren't going to be able to be answered until we start to see this team out on
the court. And the other one is of course does the scheme change. You know you bring in BOLO and we've heard, you know Jared on assembly call has talked about this quite a bit. Tony's mentioned it as well. There's been a lot of discontent with Mike Woodson's offense and the way that it runs and it is a very old school looking offense the way that it has run. But if you're going to run that, you better get the best possible players that can run in that
system. And certainly Bolo, he's a different type of player than Khalil Ware, but that looks like a guy who can slot right in and maybe do some different things. And that's going to be really fascinating to watch as we've all seen. Those of you who are out in Vegas for that game against Arizona, you saw Ballo up close. Like, that was a guy who I remember thinking as I was watching him, like, I don't know the guy you could ever really go
get a guy like that. And I think other than the normal recruiting process, that's not a guy Indiana's getting. I mean he was at Gonzaga and went to Arizaga I think came with Tommy Lloyd or was in very close proximity to when that that transition happened where Lloyd went and took over the Arizona program.
But it I remember watching him in that game in Vegas and being like Woo that is that is a guy who just looks like a different type of basketball player that I'm used to Indiana getting. And so that's where the Portal can come in handy and that's where for a player of that size and that caliber, you've got a
lot to sell. If you're Mike Woodson because you can point to Trace Jackson Davis, you can point to Coleal Ware and say those two guys, well you know one of them's in the NBA and is playing incredibly well. One of them's going to be in the NBA that's going to be you next. And that's you know alongside the nil money you've got to have those two things. It's not just about one or the other with that caliber of player.
So you know, obviously I don't think that you can give a final grade on the portal until you know probably mid-May because there's going to be some scrambling. I think up to that point, we've still got about a month of this, but it is gratifying that the IU fan base can rest a little bit easier because these weren't just Portal editions, these were
big portal gets. And for Indiana to be able to say we got these two guys, that's going to be a selling point that goes elsewhere and I think the fans can relax a little bit at least in terms of there's going to be talented players out there playing basketball for Indiana. You know, how do they look? How does that come together? You know, that is that is an open question.
And I think that there's some deserved skepticism about how everything gets put together going into this upcoming year.
But I do think if you were feeling doom and gloom about Indiana or if you were being like, you know, really skeptical about the chances of of things materializing, This is why you you really can't ever close the door, I think, on where a program is AT. And again, it's part of the equation, and there's a lot of other elements to it that come down to style of play, come down to, you know, will we see as successful of an offense, as you saw with Trace Jackson Davis?
Is that possible with the style of offense? Where does the shooting come from? From the outside? I think all of those things are valid questions. But I also think that you can acknowledge that there's something special that's happened in terms of being able to get these two players out of the portal, being able to keep a lot of the key pieces together
from this last season. And I think you can feel good about that as an IU fan and be very curious and and anticipatory about what happens next. So looking forward to talking more about the remainder of the Portal season. I think we might have some more movement coming up this week, maybe even by the time this podcast drops. So definitely worth keeping an
eye on things. And if you didn't catch the emergency podcast that our friends at Assembly called did with Omar Balo signing I think the Rick Rick Bozich came on I think they had a couple other people on go check that out. It's a nice blow by blow and a kind of a re evaluation of where he he fits into the landscape. Just a reminder I mentioned Assembly call we're all part of the back home network brought to
you by home field apparel. It is a little five week and as we go into our interview with Rachel Brown, you know, former twice race winner when she was in school. You know, Little 5 retains such a special spot within the culture of Indiana University and it touches so many lives and there's never really been a huge amount of merch around the Little 500. You know, home field put a shirt out a couple years ago, which I wear proudly.
Really enjoy that. There's, you know, if you, if you're working the race as I have done every year, you get some polos or things like that. But there's not a lot out there, you know, with Little 5 branding and yet that's changing because of home field apparel. A little 500 merch drop coming up this Friday and Saturday and it's I think 8 pieces of Little 500 merchandise, some amazing looking stuff.
If you haven't, go to their social media and check out the pictures and I think you'll be thrilled at what you see. If you go to Upland on Friday or Saturday here in Bloomington, you can get 20% off the little 5 merge, so take advantage of that. If you're not in Bloomington, it's fine. You get his order straight off of home field apparel.com use the code home 23 get 15% off your first order again, home field apparel.com Some little 5 merge this year. Really excited.
Go check it out. And we appreciate their support on the podcast. We're going to go ahead and get to our interview with Rachel Brown and there's no ending to this podcast. The podcast just kind of cuts off. We had to do that because of the way that we recorded it earlier. So enjoy my conversation with Rachel. I'm going to, I'm going to change time and space. I'm going to jump into a studio,
so you're going to see me there. If you're watching a video, if you're just listening, you're just going to hear A quick pause and we'll get to our interview with former two time race winner and color commentator on the women's Little 500 broadcast, Rachel Brown. Coming up now and joining us on a special edition of Crimson Cast LITTLE 500 Edition, Part
one. We're going to have more of these because the LITTLE 5. 100 races of course are coming up next week, next Friday and Saturday, and we are thrilled to have on Crimson Cast today not only a member of a winning Little 500 team from the 2018 season, but also one of our broadcasters for the Little 500 broadcast. Rachel Brown back for a second season on the Little 500 broadcast joining us on the show. Rachel, great to see you again. It's been a while.
How are you doing? Galen, good to see you too. Everything's great, especially now that it's April. My brain basically just switches from working to this being the primary thing that's on my mind, So I'm feeling really excited for the upcoming couple of weeks.
It's always a lot of fun. It's something that a lot of people still in the IU universe don't know that we do, which is cover Little 500. But you know we've it's been an in house production that's streamed through IU broadcast since basically 2016. It's something we get a lot of students involved in. You got a chance to work with some of them last year, but we also like to get alums from Little 500 involved and you've been very much a part of that.
Let's start with that. First and foremost, give us your background. How did you come to IU in the 1st place? Like where did you grow up and and what got you interested initially in riding Little 5? Sure. So I think where I can start then is I'm from Fishers IN for those who are Hoosiers born and
raised. I went to Hamilton Southeastern High School. I played sports my whole life just as a lot of Hoosiers do, and then made that transition from here to choosing to come to IU not quite knowing exactly what was going to be on the horizon. I knew that I was going to be pre Med and I wanted to work hard and figure out who I was. But pretty much like any 18 year old, I couldn't tell you what that was going to look like.
And then I found that the Little five was the thing that, like, gave a scaffold to create sort of an identity for myself, to figure out how to work hard and to do it with other people. And for me, that looked like joining Kappa Alpha Theta as a freshman, joining the bike team thereafter, and then pretty much double majoring in whatever I was doing to get into Med
school. And then besides that, just doing a little 5. And so that was pretty much the most formative experience of my life for those couple of years. And that led for me to join on with my teammates for back-to-back victories in 2017 and 2018. And now it's just an absolute privilege to be able to still be involved in the race almost a decade down the line.
Yeah. It's it's a fascinating community because I think a lot of people outside of the Greek system don't necessarily understand like who participates and why and and how much work goes in not just to being a top rider like you were, but also, you know, doing the academics that you need to be able to get into medical school and and trying to balance the amount of work that goes into one with the other. And what you take from each of those things that kind of sets you on your pathway.
I mean, you know, so you join Cap Alpha Theta, which if for those of you who aren't familiar with the race, like Cap Alpha Theta is among the most decorated and most successful. If not arguably the most decorated and successful of all of the women's teams historically. So you joined a a team that had a tremendous legacy going in. You know, how how quickly do you learn about that as a student and and how quickly do you kind of figure out?
Yes, not only you know, is it something that I want to do, but it's something that I have the skill and the ability to do at a high level. OK, good point. So I think that it's honestly pretty, I'd say it's easy enough if you're a freshman at IU to sort of find your own enclave or your own group and then not get that much exposure to Little 5 beyond the understanding that there is a large social gathering of all kinds happening in the spring, but.
Social gathering folks, Yes. But for me though, I knew that I was looking for something to put my energy into. And so at least when if you're going through Greek recruitment, then it's going to be mentioned. Oh, and by the way, we have a really good bike team by the way. This is something that we care about a lot and people are basically investing their entire college experiences into.
And for me, I did not know coming to IUI didn't have some, you know, alumni parent who had raced in the past and so was raised to expect to do this. Rather, my experience was just meeting people who said we care a lot about this, We are dedicated people and are on a team and that's what matters to us. And I just kind of thought that that was the coolest thing that you could really envision in terms of making the most of your college experience.
And I think that's pretty much what all the Little 5 riders who are involved in this and invested in it, that they've realized that this is just how they can make the most of being in college. What's the for you? You know you're on the two teams that win back-to-back in in 2017 and 2018. You you put the amount of work you put in and all the training and you you get to that point and you're on a team that wins. I mean, what is that feeling
like? Very few people have actually been able to experience that of all the people that have raced in little five over the course of time, even like top level riders. How have you tried? Like how would you contextualize that for for anybody that's been involved in other athletic pursuits? Like we know how given that it's a team thing as opposed to not necessarily an individual thing. Right, right.
I think that actually being able to win Little 5 is something that anyone who goes into the race and decides to dedicate themselves to it knows that they could put in four years and just never see it happen despite being the best rider in the field, despite being the best team out there, Just because the nature of the race is so fickle that you only get one chance every single year and that's it. So I think by and large, anyone who's ever won this race will tell you that it's absolutely
surreal because they have envisioned knowing I could do this for year after year after year, and the expectation should almost be that I won't win. But I also have to go in with the attitude when I train every day that I'm doing this, because I want to be able to at least give myself the best odds to win on race day. So anyone who wins, I think that you can see just from the post race interviews that they don't know what to make of themselves. It's surreal for them for the
next couple of weeks. And if they're seniors and they go on to graduate, I don't think that it hits until you're like sitting in your office job in September that you can't believe that that actually happened. Yeah, you also had some individual accolades as well. You know in terms of you, you win missing out while you're here, which is explain what that is to people who don't know. Well, I'm biased.
I think that Missing Out is the most exciting event that happens for the Spring Series. There's qualifications which does not go towards the Spring Series standings, but does determine where you start on race day. There's the individual time trials, which is just suffering for four laps. As hard as you can to get the best time. Riding by yourself.
Team pursuit, where you're riding with other people for a certain number of laps, but missing out is the best one because it's the most competitive in terms of actually using your strength and your speed strategically. So it's kind of a bracket style race where you start off with a certain number of people all at the start, finish line and then like musical chairs one lap after another, whoever crosses the finish line last is eliminated.
And so that leads, I think to being very, very strategic over the course of the day in terms of how do I use my energy in order to really use it when it counts because you're not trying to win every lap, you're just trying to not lose every lap and then win at the very, very, very end. Yeah, your your transition over to a broadcaster has been an interesting one. I mean, you and I talked a lot last year. This last year was your first
year on the broadcast. How do you take what you know as a rider and as a former champion and try to put it into words in a way that that is able to translate what you experienced out on the track to what an audience, most of whom have you know, if they've been on a bicycle, they've probably never raced competitively on a bicycle, are trying to get their heads wrapped around while they're watching this event.
Well, I found it, I think, appropriately challenging, understanding that I'm putting on a different hat than what I was training for every day when I was in college. But I think that the main things that I'm trying to focus on is just being able to cater to both audiences.
I got the benefit of knowing what it looks like to have watched race tape through the eyes of someone who is trying to learn how teams manage to win and where teams had the points at which something went wrong and that was the reason why they
lost. And so trying to keep an eye for those things, for the people who are watching really, really critically and have seen 10203040 little 500 races that I think I want to be able to speak to that audience and also speak to the audience of people who are finally coming to this for the first time. They've got their kid who is in little 500 for the first time. And they, I have no relation whatsoever to the cycling community.
And to be able to sort of pull them into, to recognize, like what a beautiful exemplar of sport and college achievement in general that it is. Yeah, how exciting is it this year with the women's race that we have a full field? I looked. We have not had a full field since 2014. So honestly, I don't know that I've ever really seen it for myself.
And given that the year after COVID we had 17 teams, this is truly stellar because I think that coming out of COVID we knew that it was going to take a lot of effort in order to I think really bring back the community and the tradition because that's so crucial to how Little 5 operates.
And so I think seeing that teams are coming out and either re emerging after not having a team for a couple of years or are deciding to do Little 5 for the first time is seriously thrilling because it's really not the same if you've got like 17/18/19. Twenty teams is having every single pit filled. Yeah, it. And it makes, it does make a big difference. I mean, they've been great races over the last decade, you know,
without the full field. But there's something about seeing all of the pit lanes completely filled, seeing the stands completely. Filled and all of the. Different colors and supporters groups that come out from the various teams and especially with the women's race, I mean the women's races, it's at a different time of day. It's not, you know, it's 4:00 on a Friday.
You know, you can get some really great visuals as the race comes to a close around 5/20, 5:30 in the afternoon and just kind of the feeling of having more people invested in the race. I think it it amps it up for all of the other teams that are there. It's it's a really special thing that's hard to describe unless you've actually been there. Yeah, I agree.
I think it's good to see just that we're getting to the point where I think women's sport more broadly is becoming something that I think people are finally recognizing has deserves just as great of an audience as sport. That is also done by the men's teams as well. And so I know that's something that for someone who's raised, that was never important to us in terms of who's coming to the race, who's seeing it. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter.
We've seen it in like 2021 that even if there's not a single member in the audience, people are still going to go out, they're going to ride hard. But I think just having the continued growth, other community and having teams that are perennially competitive as well as teams who said that's also for us and we want to give it a shot even if we're not going to be in contention our first year.
I think counts for a lot in terms of people recognizing really what Little 5 is for beyond just the couple of teams that have always been there. So let's talk about the race this year on the women's side. So let's talk about qualifications, placing and kind of where everything's AT and what you see is the main storyline.
So for those who who haven't seen this yet, I'm actually going to, I'll do a little magic here with my screen and let's just call up the qualifications Big board for the women on the left here you can see. So teeter on the pole, Alpha Chi, Omega, Novus and then you've got Delta, Gamma Kappa, Alpha Theta and Alpha Fasta Bica. I I mean, what sticks out to you, I guess, when looking at not just the first couple of rows, but just kind of the way the qualifications shook out so far this year?
I'd say first, I mean deeply unsurprising. The teeter was at the front. They were bringing pretty much everyone back this year and they look incredibly polished from the get go. And I know that they were out there riding their bikes like the couple of days after Little 5. So them coming together and putting together a really stellar performance day of is just exactly what I would expect of them.
I think that beyond that, I want to acknowledge that like Novus, Alpha Fasta, Bica, teams like those are not teams that I have that much familiarity with, just because I think that they've emerged in the couple of years since I graduated. And Alpha Fasta Bica may be new as of this year. So for them to be able to, you know, come up to the upper
echelon is really exciting. And then beyond that, I'll also say Qualls is always kind of awash in terms of like it's consequential for where teams end up. But if you ask me, Rachel, which team is really good based off of looking at the calls board, I'd say I don't know, just because it really is just based on the time of day. Right, Well, So what should people who maybe wouldn't think to look at anything other than the calls board as far as who
the contenders are? What what would you recommend they look at and what are you keeping an eye on coming into the race this year? Sure. So I think not surprisingly looking at the overall metric of where do teams land in spring series that cumulatively that does show the overall strength of a team.
And so if you go and look at where do teams stack up when it comes to the end of the day on Spring series performance, that would be the easiest and fastest way, I think, of figuring out which teams just have the most firepower for day of. But beyond that, I think it's very interesting just to see who which teams have really, really strong primary riders by going through ITT's and then getting a sense. Yeah, just being able to get get a quick look at.
Oh, if a team's got their top four riders in the 1st, 15 or 20 of ITT's, that means that pretty much every single one of their riders is one of the strongest riders in the field. And as you see here folks, Jenna Rogers from Alpha Chi Omega, actually this was last. Year. Oh yeah, I don't know if they've uploaded them. Over. You know they haven't uploaded them. That's my bad. So that's but that's the page you would be looking at. I'll, I'll dig up the actual one, yeah.
I know it's a second entry because I've been spending a lot of time looking at it as of. Late, It's a it's a lot, absolutely. But yeah, that's that's the thing to keep an eye on. And obviously there's a lot of different aspects that go into it. I mean, right now one of the things we're looking at for this upcoming race is, is the weather situation which goes back and forth. I mean, last year we had a
really weird time. We actually had a postponement for about an hour of the start of the women's race because of rain. And what does that do? Like give us a little bit of a sense of, you know, from a conditions perspective, what are ideal conditions to ride in? You know, how does rain affect things like as a rider, What do you think of in those circumstances so. I think primarily first and foremost ideal conditions.
If I were a rider and could just summon whatever I whatever weather I wanted, I would say if it could be 60°, it's cloudy and maybe it rained the night before or the morning of just a little bit. So that way the track could be padded down. In terms of the cinders being smooth and consistent, then that's what I would like ideally
have in terms of the conditions. I think that if it gets hotter and drier, then the cinders can become loose, and I think it's a lot easier than for bikes to fishtail, especially when they're going really, really fast. And then on the other side of the spectrum, if it's rainy, it can just be honestly pretty atrocious conditions.
You can get puddles where the teams have to decide if they want to go through it or ride around, and that can kind of even just cause the pack to break up a little bit and it can get more dangerous from that perspective as well. Here's this year's top 20 finishers for ITT and so I I wanted to call these up. So as you mentioned, you know if you've got a cluster of your best riders in the top 15, that's generally a pretty good sign. Audrey Laval, the overall ITT champion for this year.
And then you've got kind of an interesting mix of of you know of of riders from other teams. Teeter's got, I think all do they have all four in the top 15? I think that they do, which, which goes back to what you were talking about in terms of the qualifications and whatnot.
Yeah, I think that Teeter and Theta both have their top four in the 1st 20 of IT, TS. So right away you know that there's just not a weak link for other teams to be chipping away at. And beyond that, I think that we're seeing not surprisingly like Melanzana, they've got a really good sprinter and then Dorothy for Novus and Allison for Delta Zeta. I think that those are teams where my impression from this is that those girls had been
putting in like a consummate amount of effort without having like the pre-existing training that some teams do from year to year. Like Delta, Gamma and Theta are gonna be doing the same training every year.
But for like Novus and for DZ, for them to have riders that are in the top five ITTSI think that those girls have really been working hard to create stuff, maybe from scratch, even in order to be able to be up in the same echelon as some of the other riders from teams that you typically see on the podium year to year. Yeah, it's there's so much that goes into that. I mean people and again most of the public only sees the race outcome like what happens that
day. I mean what are we talking about training wise? Like what? I mean what is the, what is the the full commitment that you're doing as as a a starting like a a top four rider on a team that's a contender on a weekly basis or or even a daily basis? I think that people try and probably downplay just how much it is that they're putting into it because they understand that it can just sound like a lot to people who aren't in it.
But it really does look like scheduling out most of your life in order to permit you to be able to do the equivalent of like a part time job whenever you can fit it in. So like most teams that are really, really strong, or riders who are strong individually are biking six days a week with an off day just so that way that for the other six days they can go harder. Otherwise they'd end up doing 7
if they could. It looks like scheduling your classes with the intent of being able to give yourself enough sunlight to be able to make the most year round you decide if you're going to study abroad based off of when little 5 happens. And like may forego that entirely just for the sake of being able to not miss your fall training semester and then even like, deciding where you're going to take a summer internship based off of, like, how good the writing's going to be.
So people like genuinely will plan out like the entirety of their four years in order to make the most of it. Like if you can spend a summer in Colorado just to get the elevation gains, then like there were people who will go to that point just to be able to know that they've like, maximized their time. That's it's amazing and it's laudable. I mean that amount of
dedication. I mean it's hard to it's it's it's interesting thing right now I think about college there's it's like fashionable to bag on college kids for a variety of reasons like they're unmotivated or XY or Z or they want things handed to, which I've never really believed. Like I I love the students I work with on a daily basis. You've met some of them you know in the sports media program who
they put. They're not putting that amount of physical exertion in, but the amount of time they're putting in to prepare for what they do and then going out and actually doing it is is really far beyond I think what most people would think. And it's it's amazing.
You think about you like little five you're talking about for each race, men's and women's, it's not just 130 some riders that are you know, the the on the teams that are preparing, but there's extra riders on the teams that don't make the final four that are still putting in this amount of effort. Like it's a lot of people putting in a lot of time.
And it's, you know, the fact that that many people get that much out of it from an emotional perspective, from a growth perspective is is really it's it's something again, that I've been very impressed with the more I've gotten to know the the riders and the people that participate in the race. Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. I think that first I want to say that the media students are just consummate professionals in
terms of how they approach this. And so I really appreciated that because I know that coming in as an amateur they are really on top of it in terms of being able to both do their job and offer appropriate guidance. And beyond that, I just think that there's been, I've been very impressed by all of the little thigh riders who have come after me in terms of just the overall level of maturity and commitment that they're demonstrating from like 1819 years of age.
Now looking back with a fully formed frontal lobe and I think how easily like you could be spending your time on other things instead. Seeing that people are choosing to dedicate themselves to something that I think really is just for the sake of self improvement and to know that you're going to be trying to grow alongside other people at a formative period of your life is just really impressive to be able to see. Absolutely.
So for those of you who are going to be tuning in and we hope that everybody does this will be available on broadcast.iu.edu. I'm actually going to drop the link for the broadcast for both the women's and the men's race in the description of this podcast. Rachel will be our analyst up top. So she'll be working with Zion Brown who's one of our play by play broadcasters in calling the action on the track throughout
the course of the race. The the broadcast starts at 4:00 on Friday. April, is it 19th? I think it's the 19th. It is the 19th, yes, I have to double check, but 4:00, Friday, April 19th. But you won't be the only one involved 'cause we'll also have down on the field our field reporters Kara Adams, Riley Woodall and Katie Capusta who is not only a former writer but also a former media school student. So there's some nice synergy there.
She'll be be our on field expert trying to give an analysis of what's going on down in the infield and and down in the pits while you're providing kind of the top down view of everything. So it should be a lot of fun. It's always a a fun broadcast. The woman's broadcast is always my favorite one because it's a more compact product. Like there's, you know, the the the men's race and I love the men's race too.
But it kind of feels like if you ever watched an Indy 500 all the way through, there's that period at like lap 80 where you're like, man, we got a long way to go. But whereas at lap 80 in the women's race, like that's when that's when the real action is starting, like that's when you know the you're you're down to brass tacks so to speak at that
stage of things. Yeah, usually you can find a point where you could like take a nap, go to the bathroom, get a snack during the men's race and not miss too much. Women's race are pretty hard pressed to find a moment where you could say that you could get up from the stands, leave for 5 minutes and then not have missed something incredibly
consequential. Yeah, it's, it is, it is little 5 on steroids essentially just in terms of how, how compressed all the action is. So we will be going on air live at 4:00 Friday, April 19th. We'll have Rachel on the call. We'll have Katie Capusta on the call, Zion Brown, Kara Adams, Riley Woodall, Emma Watson, Lauren Brewer producing the broadcast. We're really looking forward to it, Rachel. Looking forward to seeing you
back in town. I know you're coming in next week, so we will catch up some more than and thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. This is great. Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I can't wait. Absolutely. Rachel Brown, our color commentator for the 2024 women's LITTLE 500 broadcast. Thank you.