When Kappa Alpha Theta’s Liz Lieberman got on the bike on lap 97, she was ready for the sprint that everyone was waiting for, the sprint the entire race had built up to.

Theta, Ski, Phoenix Cycling, Alpha Chi Omega, CSF and Alpha Omicron Pi were all bunched together on 99, with the RaceMonitor app showing AOPi (then 6th) trailing the then-leader Ski by just 1.31 seconds after 98 laps had been scored.

But around Turn 3 on 99, Lieberman turned back to check for an attack from behind. Instead, she only saw Phoenix’s Tabitha Sherwood. The rest of the field, for the most part, was down, getting caught up in a massive wreck.

It brought out a yellow flag, and it brought tears to Lieberman’s eyes. With the yellow out, she knew she would win under caution, and the tears started to slide down her cheek. She would coast across the finish line first in a yellow-checker finish, winning Theta’s sixth Little 500, and their second in a row. The six victories is more than any other team in the women’s field.

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Can’t stress enough that these are unofficial. This is the final listing on the RaceMonitor app. No word yet from IUSF on official results. I’m guessing video will have to be used to determine the final order when the yellow was dropped. But, this at least gives you somewhat of a general idea where teams were.

1 Kappa Alpha Theta (1:14:19.819) 2 Phoenix Cycling 3 Delta Gamma

4 Cru 5 CSF 6 Ski

7 Alpha Omicron Pi 8 Gamma Phi Beta 9 Alpha Chi Omega

10 Alpha Xi Delta 11 Teter 12 Alpha Sigma Alpha

13 Delta Sigma Pi 14 Alpha Gamma Delta 15 Kappa Delta

16 Phi Mu 17 Kappa Kappa Gamma 18 Melanzana

19 RideOn 20 Theta Phi Alpha 21 Independent Council

22 WingIt 23 IU Nursing 24 Alpha Delta Pi 

25 Chi Omega 26 Pi Beta Phi 27 Delta Zeta

28 Zeta Tau Alpha 29 Alpha Phi 30 Sigma Delta Tau

31 Delta Phi Epsilon 32 Alpha Epsilon Phi

The past three years, I’ve been really confident in picking a race favorite. This year, more so than any of the past four years, seems to be a complete toss up.

It seems cliche to say it because it feels like it’s said every year, but there’s really a range of about 6-8 teams that could win the race, and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. There’s so many variables this year, and so, so many strong teams, it makes choosing a winner exponentially difficult.

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Just like last year, I’ll give my picks for the top 5 finishers. I’m also adding in my predictions for All-Star riders and rookies of the year, as well as the Dixie Highway winner.

My pick last year, the first year I picked the women’s race, finished second (Teter). I didn’t think a fairly young Kappa Alpha Theta team had enough to get past the veteran Teter team. This year, I’m taking a now experienced, and arguably even deeper Theta team, to repeat.

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As explained in the men’s post, this combines a rider’s ITT finish and their MNO finish (like a golf score, the lower the score the better, as 1 point is assigned to the ITT winner, 1 point to MNO winner, 2 to 2nd, 3 to 3rd, etc.) to create a list of the very best individual riders.

Like we said on the men’s post, this is far from an exact science, but it’s fun to look at.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

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Each spring, there are two different individual events, ITTs and MNO. ITTs is about raw speed around the track, while MNO combines a riders speed with their ability to ride in traffic, battle for track position and make timely runs.

Both are obviously important, so we decided to combine the two events together to create a master power ranking of the top men’s riders.

To reach this ranking, we took the number of points of a rider’s ITT finish (i.e. if you finished 9th in ITTs, you get 9 points. Finish 21st, you get 21 points) and combined it with a similar point measure in MNO (final heat received points 1-6 based on final finish, semifinalists received points 7-11 based on their finish, with both sides of the bracket receiving equal points for that finish in the semis). Obviously then, it becomes like a golf score. Lowest score wins.

It’s not perfect, but we believe it shows who some of the very best riders in the field are. Riders had to finish strong in both of the individual events to land on this ranking.

Here’s the list:

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After returning two riders from last year’s Little 500 championship team, Kappa Alpha Theta reloaded this year with two rookies and won the spring series in dominant fashion. And in the process, a new star was born.

Theta’s Liz Lieberman showed she is by far the best rider in the field during both ITTs and Miss N Out.

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For the second consecutive year, Black Key Bulls captured the spring series, in large part thanks to a first place finish in Team Pursuit.

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