Outdoor or indoor; it doesn’t matter what conditions the NIU women’s track and field team are competing in, as head coach Connie Teaberry  manages to find a way to prepare her squad.

After breaking numerous school records during the indoor season, the Huskies will look to do the same outdoors.

Teaberry took some time to chat with the Northern Star about her team’s early success, the differences between indoor and outdoor events, and the obstacles she faces training her team in the chilly weather.

Northern Star: In the first meet of the outdoor season, your team broke two school records. How good is it to see that, regardless of the season, your team is still finding ways to have success?

Connie Teaberry: We’ve started the outdoor season with some good weather, which always helps when you’re in outdoor track. We took the ladies to San Diego State and also Point Loma. Very relaxed atmosphere to play in Point Loma, the girls did a great job of keeping it together and working through some aches and pains and we were able to set a school record 4×100 and then turn around and have Cora [Caulfield] set a school record in the discus. So the good thing as the coaching staff is that we see the girls willing to work as you’re building a program, especially without having an [outdoor] track for the first five years I was here and now having one for the past two years. You’re starting to see the confidence come up. You’re able to do workouts that you need to. It’s becoming more evident in the success of having an outdoor track.

NS: Besides the weather conditions, what are the biggest transition from the indoor to outdoor season?

CT: Definitely the weather outside; it’s conducive to track and field conditions can be a huge plus. But also the size of the tracks. Sometimes your indoor tracks are 200 meters or smaller, which means the curves are really tight and it’s really strenuous on your body and legs. Going outdoors sometimes, like I said before due to the weather being right, it’s just helps training a lot better. The surfaces are a little bit softer, outdoor weather than indoors. You see a lot better times because as far as your body dimensions as far as sprinting and jumping, even throwing, you have so much leeway with the size of the track as far as indoors.

NS: Is it pleasing to see a new athlete setup each week and set a new school record?

CT: We have a talented group of young ladies. As we’ve had in the past, honestly, it is being able to have an outdoor track in the fall that you can really train hard on. You’ve got the long jump runways, the pole vault area… being able to get that great training in the fall, because when we come indoors we don’t have long jump runways and pole vault and high jump is very limited. The girls are doing a great job of just being focused. We had great success last year after having the track, and the girls have had that taste of moving on up in the MAC. We had two girls go to Nationals. So it’s kind of like a ripple-effect; now more girls want to experience that same thing. I think that’s been the aid in breaking records. We just have more girls that have bigger goals now than we had in the past.

NS: Is it difficult training in the cold weather while you’re in the outdoor season?

CT: The cold weather definitely makes things difficult but it does make for stronger athletes. So if we can get through this and train, it will make them stronger. So that way when we get to these bigger meets when the weather is good or the weather is not good, we can compare it back to when we were at home and say, ‘Look, we’ve been training in 30-degree weather and went to a meet, and it was 25 degrees and we still excelled.’ But yes, honestly, it makes tougher athletes. It has its strong points but I don’t have to say I like it.