The cross country team attended the Alabama Crimson Classic last week to continue the team’s good start to the season.
“We did well,” said Assistant track and field Coach Rocky Capello. “We wanted to come to a course like this because the field was really competitive, some of the best teams around the country were going to be attending and it’s the toughest course we’re going to run on this year because of the hills. It gave us a chance to see how good we were going to be in tough conditions. I was very pleased with the way the meet turned out. The times weren’t as good as they were at Texas A&M, but this was a much more challenging course so I think it turned out really well and sets us up for the conference meet coming up.”
The Southland Conference Championships will be held on Oct. 27. This meet has been something that the team has been preparing for and hoping to do their best at.
“This course was probably a minute tougher than the last course so we only had one girl set a personal record on the girls team, she beat her last time by thirty seconds,” said Capello. “I told everyone before the meet, ‘If you come within a minute of your Texas A&M time, you did really really well,’ because this course is harder.”
Capello has high hopes for the girls team and notices that they are young, with most of them being freshman.
“On the boys side, it looks really good,” said Capello. “We ran against Stephen F. Austin today, they beat us but I still think it was pretty close. We were in striking distance of them. It looks like we have a good chance of finishing anywhere from 3rd to 6th place in the conference meet depending on how well we run that day.”
Capello expanded on his expectations for the team.
“It’s certainly not impossible for us to be in the realm of the top three teams that plays,” said Capello. “On the girl’s side, I believe we are going to place between 6th and 8th, because they are still young and improving. I think that next year will be the year to do something special on the girls side, and we can actually run with more than just five girls on the team like we’re doing this year which is hard.”
Freshmen Tara Stuntz, Sophie Daigle and Breanna Bernard ran 24 minutes or better in a 6K on the hardest course they have ever ran at the Alabama Crimson Classic, and Capello is really enjoying how well everyone is doing this year. He thinks they have a shot at breaking three minutes in the conference meet.
“Half of the team has been sick, the flu has been going around campus so we have been dealing with that,” said Capello. “Hopefully it’s coming to an end, but you can tell what players were suffering from being sick because it’s hard to run out there when you were sick all week trying to recover from those viruses. I think both girls and guys team have a great shot of doing good at the conference meet.”