Maybe it’s the Memorial Stadium magic behind such a record-setting season.

Whatever it may be, the Kansas University women’s track and field program has staked its claim within the collegiate sports community this year.

“KU’s been more basketball, and football now, so we’ll get, ‘Oh, you all have a track team?'” KU senior Crystal Manning said. “Yeah, we have a track team. Everybody is coming together and trying to put us on the map. That’s why I think we’re an all-around school with all the sports we have here.”

The women’s program, behind athletes such as Manning, junior sprinter Nickesha Anderson, and Russian-born senior pole vaulter Kate Sultanova, have KU track and field on the map again.

Stanley Redwine enters his eighth year as head coach of the program.

In three of the four years leading up to the hiring of Redwine in 2001, the KU women finished last in the Big 12 Conference indoor championships.

The best finish by a KU women’s team under Redwine has been ninth.

This year, the Jayhawks finished a program-best third at the Big 12 Conference Indoor Track and Field Championship. They were two points behind Nebraska for second place.

Kansas, ranked No. 6 in the nation following the conference championship, sent six women – juniors Stephanie Horton, Charity Stowers and Sha’Ray Butler, along with Manning, Anderson and Sultanova – to the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship. The team set a new standard for the program at the NCAA indoor with a 10th-place finish.

Manning, who competes in the long jump, triple jump and several running events, teamed with Anderson, Stowers and Butler to make up the 1,600-meter relay team that finished 10th at the NCAA championship.

After claiming the Big 12 crown in the triple jump, Manning finished 13th at the NCAA championship and became the first triple jump All-American in KU history.

Anderson also received an All-America honor in the 200-meter dash – in which she finished second at NCAA – and in the 60-meter after finishing sixth at NCAA. She is the first KU woman to win the distinction in either event and became the first Kansas woman since Kristi Kloster in 1996 to win All-America honors in two events.

Sultanova won her second straight Big 12 title in the pole vault. She also placed third at the NCAA championship for a second consecutive year and earned All-America honors in the process.

The outdoor season begins today at the Missouri Relays in Columbia, Mo.