Indiana University School of Journalism

Home » Features » IDS staffers field Little 500 team

Photo by James Brosher

IDS staffers Liz Dilts, Rachael Fullmer and Chelsea Merta will race in the women’s Little 500 race Friday.

Related Read Dilts' blog about the Tau Tau Tau Little 500 experience. Former Kenya class partner now KTN broadcaster (May 13) Students interested in magazines find several options to learn, network (May 2) Students developing tablet apps to extend storytelling options (April 30)

If you listen closely, you might hear “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” coming from the mouths of Tau Tau Tau, a Little 500 team of Indiana Daily Student staffers, during the women’s event Friday.

The members are senior Liz Dilts and sophomores Rachael Fullmer and Chelsea Merta. They’ll be competing in a race that’s become legendary since its beginnings in 1951. Both Friday’s women’s race, which begins at 4 p.m., and Saturday’s men’s race at 2 p.m. Saturday are at Bill Armstrong Stadium on the IU campus.

Earlier in the year, while working as editors for the IDS, Fullmer and Dilts began discussing how much they love cycling and wished they were “real” cyclists. Then Fullmer got serious about forming a team.

“I thought she was crazy when she mentioned putting a team together,” said Dilts. Still, two days before registration, Dilts joined the team with Fullmer and Merta, current City/State editor, and the team was born.

The team is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by the IDS. IDS staffers don’t have a history of riding in Little 5 but usually concentrate more on covering the event. Because the schedule of a student journalist is so hectic, the team members joke that this is why there has never been an IDS team before. After all, Dilts missed her first individual time trial because of a journalism class and the team missed Miss-N-Out last Saturday because Dilts and Fullmer were busy collecting their scholarships at the annual School of Journalism Scholarship Ceremony.

Dilts is still grateful for the chance to race, even as an unofficial representative of IDS.

“I hope it’s one more tradition we can start,” she said. “It’s just another way the IDS can get out there. We write and represent the students, but people forget we are students.”

With only three members and not a lot of free time, the team is strained beyond capacity, said Dilts. With less time to recuperate between riding and with no margin for error, the team members will have their work cut out for them Friday. Dilts also is trying to keep up a blog about the Little 5 experience. At the end of each entry is the team’s motto: “We’d have to steal it to win it.”

But Dilts hopes they will keep chugging along, just like the Little Engine That Could. She wants to finish the race or at least have completed 90 percent of the laps by the time the race is called. To her, that’s exactly how she wants to end her senior year.

“It’s really going out in style,” she said.

Questions? Comments? Email the Web editor.