By Katie Rippel
Staff Writer

Walk-on athletes, with their hard work, perseverance and pure love of the sport, have given sports some of its great moments.

Probably one of the more familiar ones is Dan Reutiger's story of walking on to the Notre Dame football team. The movie "Rudy" depicts his biggest moment, in which he simply gets to play in one game.

The Purdue men's track and field team has a lot of walk-on athletes that aren't just glad to get the opportunity to compete. They have also impacted the program, and some of them have even earned scholarships for their achievements.

"Some of the all-time best athletes here at Purdue started out as walk-ons," said Purdue coach Mike Poehlein. "You couldn't have a track team without them — maybe in other sports but not in ours."

Athletes such as junior sprinter Markus Williams and junior distance runner Donnie Fellows started as walk-ons and earned scholarships.

Williams finished seventh in the 200-meter run and fourth in the 400-meter run at last year's Indoor Big Ten Championships. His best performance came in the outdoor Big Ten meet later that year when he finished second in the 400-meter run with a personal-best time of 46.94 seconds. Williams cited the achievement as one of his biggest thrills since joining the team. Originally, he joined the team to help his time-management skills and to improve his grades, but since then he has found that he likes knowing he's a part of something.

Fellows placed eighth in both the 3,000- and 5,000-meter runs at this year's indoor Big Ten meet. He was also named team Most Valuable Player and All-Big Ten during the cross-country season.

"Donnie Fellows will go down as one of our best distance runners," said Poehlein. "Donnie's accomplishments are equal to those of Markus."

Storm Harper, a hurdler and middle distance runner, placed sixth at the 1997 outdoor Big Ten meet in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. The senior is another Boilermaker who started as a walk-on but earned a scholarship.

Sophomore thrower Nick Swathwood placed seventh in the shot put and 10th in the discus at last year's Big Ten Outdoor Championships as a walk-on.

Poehlein said there are a number of current walk-on Boilers who have done extremely well for the team. Among those athletes are junior hurdler Craig Lill, junior sprinter Jamel Perryman, junior pole vaulter Scott Koschka, senior middle distance runner Jeff Minks and junior distance runner Chris Boesch.

"Our walk-ons that are producing are about equal to the number of scholarship athletes," Poehlein said.

He also said a lot of his walk-ons could have gone to other schools on scholarship but chose Purdue for its academic reputation or just wanted to wait to see if the rigors of a collegiate sport would work with their chosen field of study.

Perryman summed up his reasons for why he walked on and has since stuck with it.

"I guess every week at practice I realize I'm accomplishing something," said Perryman. "I'm out here because I like the sport and accomplishing my goals."

• These athletes will join the rest of the Purdue men's track team at the Butler Invitational in Indianapolis this weekend. Competition begins at 3 p.m. today.