OP, another thing to consider is using a road front wheel with a bolt on skewer. When I first started, I used an old road Zipp 404 I had. The bolt on skewer was like $10.
One caveat, road wheels aren't always stiff enough for track racing. It worked fine for TTs/pursuits, but in sprints, I could feel the wheel give at points, which was not a good feeling.
I'll also add that the word stiffness gets thrown around a lot on these forums. The truth is, in years of road racing, I never really noticed a major difference in frame, bars or wheel stiffness. But once I got into track racing, I really did start noticing when things were not stiff enough.