Oct. 6, 2005 -- As I'm writing
this update we are at about the midway point to the season and a
time where we are beginning to look ahead toward the championship
meets. When our team first returned to Chicago, about 6 weeks ago,
I didn't know exactly what to expect. In 2003 we had a great season
that ended at the NCAA Championship meet and I thought we had established
ourselves as a team that would be a consistent addition to that
competition. No one from our top 5 graduated but with 2 members
of our team overseas in the study abroad program and 2 more that
were dealing with injury problems we couldn't quite get back to
where we were.
So as this season
began perhaps I was cautiously optimistic. I felt that we had the
lead runners needed to make an impact on the NCAA's but wasn't quite
as confident in our depth. The women had a great summer of training
and came into the season very well prepared and we won our first
competition at the Elmhurst Invitational. Not a high powered meet
but there was certainly good competition in the field including
Northern Illinois (an NCAA Division 1 school). I was pleased with
the way our team ran that short course (2 miles) and the fact that
we did show decent depth.
The next weekend
we traveled to DeCorah, IA to compete in the Luther College "All-American"
Invitational. This was going to be a great early season test for
our team going up against UW-LaCrosse, Macalester College and Luther
College who were all nationally ranked teams. When the meet was
over La Crosse was a clear winner and we were just edged out by
a very strong Macalester team for 2nd. I was very pleased with the
way our squad competed that day overall but a little concerned that
their was a fairly large gap between our 4th and 5th runner. Had
we tightened that up we could have finished 2nd.
Two weeks later
we were back in action at the Augustana Invitational. This was a
meet that presented a challenge from two nationally ranked teams
within our region (North Central College and Wheaton College) along
with the #5 ranked team in the N.A.I.A. (Olivet Nazarene) and #14
ranked team in the NCAA 2 (UW-Parkside). We were most interested
in how we would compete against North Central and Wheaton, two teams
we would have to be able to defeat later in the season to advance
to the NCAA's. Our women really rose up to the challenge and finished
just 5 points behind Olivet and easily outdistanced the rest of
the teams in the field. After the meet the regional reps recognized
Chicago was back and we moved into the national poll ranked 18th.
The following
weekend we entered one of the largest invitationals anywhere in
the country right in our own backyard. The Loyola "Lakefront"
Invitational. This meet attracts teams from all over the country
and from every division. Last year they began separating the meet
into two different races. The Maroon division for non Division 1
schools and the Gold Division for Division 1. We were invited into
the Gold division due to our national ranking along with a couple
of ranked schools from the NCAA 2. The gold division had 28 teams
competing and was a great opportunity for us to get a feel for what
the competition would be like at the NCAA's later this year.
I would compare
the field at Loyola very closely to what we can expect at the NCAA's.
The field size was very similar as was the competition. My goal
for our women's team going into the meet was to finish in the top
half of the field and we accomplished that goal by placing 13th
overall. Had we run in the Maroon division our times would have
won the race by simply putting our times into that field. I felt
we gained two real important things this weekend. 1) we got a feel
for what the big competitions will be like at the end of the year
and 2) Macalester College who had beaten us earlier in the season
won the Maroon race and we would have gone by them with our performance.
This was another
good confidence boost for our team that was still right in the midst
of the toughest training period of the season. What was most pleasing
though over the last two races was that my early concerns of a possible
lack of depth had been completely answered. We now have 8 women
that have put themselves in a position to be point scorers (top
5 runners) for us on any given weekend.
Senior captains
Jessica Winter (Wheaton, IL) and Annie Sanders (Madison, WI), Juniors
Vidthya Abraham (Spartansburg, SC), Jackie Kropp (Stevens Point,
WI), Megan Myrick (Denver, CO), Dilshanie Perera (Princeton, NJ)
and Al Robertson (Yakima, WA) along with sophomore Hannah Moots
(Nashville, TN) have established themselves as people we can rely
upon every week to race well. The comfort of knowing we have that
type of depth allows our front runners to attack the race and a
pack running mentality behind them.
Jessica Winter
and Dilshanie Perera are both All-Region runners from last year
and Jessica is an NCAA All-American in the 1500 meter run. They
are running better then ever and have so many teammates pushing
them daily in practice that the original goal of making the NCAAs
not only seems realistic we now expect it to happen.
This weekend
we will be holding out the majority of our team before going to
UW-Parkside for our final tune-up of the season prior to the championship
meets. That's a meet in which we will get to run against a few more
ranked teams but one we will feel we can win. The main focus will
be to continue running a pack mentality type of race and to attach
the second half of the course.
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