Thanks to an amazing group of newcomers, Ohio State track coach Russ Rogers said the women’s scarlet and gray track and field teams are looking to have a medal-filled future.True freshman Desiree Jones and Donica Merriman, as well as first-year transfer Dominque Calloway, make up the core of the powerful new class of women.”All three of them show tremendous leadership,” Rogers said. “And the thing that makes me feel good is that I know that I’ve got them for the next three or four years, and we can build the team around them – the team for the future. This year will be the year that we really start going forward. With the nucleus that we have, I think we can win the Big Ten in the next couple of years.”Merriman will be focusing her strength this season on the 100-meter hurdles and the 200-meter and 400-meter dashes. She made her name known this winter at the Big Ten indoor track finals when she won first place in the 55-meter high hurdles. She was also part of the 4 x 100 relay which took second place last weekend in Los Angeles. “I’ve been running for six years,” Merriman said. “I was trying to find myself – something I could do other than school.”She explained that when she was a 12-year-old, her father found her a summer track team to compete with. She has progressed quite a bit since then – Rogers predicts she will eventually make it to the Olympics.”They say I have a lot of potential – I just take their word for it,” Merriman said. “I’m an athlete, so I really don’t see it.”While attending Trotwood-Madison High School in Dayton, Merriman set the state record for the 100-meter hurdles. She said her next goal is to run that same event in 13 seconds flat.Jones, from Akron, burst into the collegiate scene when she broke the OSU pentathlon record, placing second at the indoor Big Ten championships. A pentathlon requires athletes to compete in the hurdles, long jump, shot put and the 800-meter run.”She was one of the best all-around athletes in the state of Ohio,” Rogers said. “It’s amazing to be a freshman and finish first or second in the Big Ten.” Calloway, a transfer from the University of Notre Dame, was awarded with All-American honors last year after she placed eighth in the 100-meter hurdles at the NCAA championships. In Arizona, at her first outdoor meet wearing the Buckeye uniform, she won first place in both the 100-meter hurdles and the 200-meter dash.”I’m really surprised and proud of these young people,” Rogers said. “They came in and adjusted and played their role. They came in and started contributing right away and the team had to respect that.”Rogers said that all of these young athletes attend OSU on scholarship.”We really recruited them – every school in the country was trying to recruit them,” Rogers said. “It was a major accomplishment for us to get them.”All of these athletes will be competing this weekend at the University of California at Berkeley. Rogers said he is only taking his best athletes to this meet.”That’s amazing too,” Rogers said. “You don’t usually have freshmen that come in and travel with the team right away.”