Cross Country heads north, finds valuable freshmen

As most students headed home for Labor Day weekend, the GCSU men and women’s cross country teams were already in New England for their first meet of the 2008 season.

The Bobcats left campus Wednesday afternoon and flew into the Boston Airport that night from Atlanta, giving new meaning to the term “cross country”. Thursday was spent mostly sightseeing around Boston and visiting historical landmarks in the area.

“It was really cool, especially as a freshman, to go to Boston for my first college race,” first-year runner Colin Conroy said.

The team left Boston on Thursday night for New Hampshire to scope the courses and mentally prepare for the races on Saturday.

The Bobcats were the only Division II team running in the meet on Saturday, and were overmatched against the top-level competition. However, the team had an optimistic outlook following the race, according to second-year runner Dani Destiche.

“The team got creamed in the race in New Hampshire, but we didn’t let it get to us,” she said, “because we were racing against Boston College, New Hampshire University, and Providence, all very competitive Division I schools.”

The men’s team, who ran an 8-kilometer course as opposed to the women’s 5-kilometer, began the season with strong times by all the runners.

New to the 8-kilometer race, Conroy lead the team by posting a 28:45 and placing thirty-second overall.

“It was really different running an 8K instead of a 5K because I have never done an 8K before,” Conroy said. “You also see a lot better competition than you did in high school.”

Junior Josh Hollar placed thirty-fifth with a time of 29:15. Sophomore Erik Ottoson placed thirty-eighth in 29:42 and Daniel Horseman was fortieth in 30:02.

Ottoson reflected on the results against tough competition.

“It’s barely into the season and the team is really young. Out of the six guys racing, four were freshmen,” Ottoson said. “You know, we still got to get our gears oiled.”

The women’s team, led by Destiche with a time of 20:09, scored 151 points at the meet and took fourth place overall.

“Most of us are counting on improving our times before the end of the season,” Destiche said. “Since this weekend was our first race and we haven’t done many speed workouts, our times were not as fast as they will be by conference.”

Destiche, who placed thirty-fourth, finished just one second ahead of the thirty-fifth-place runner, freshman teammate Karissa Eckstrom. Junior Heather Raines and freshman Sarah Balkcom placed thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth with times of 20:45 and 20:50, respectively.

“It was a good opening race to get us ready for the preconference race this Saturday,” senior captain Sarah Hakala said.

The Bobcats will host the first race ever held at GCSU at West Campus on Sept. 6 at 8:30 a.m.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 5 2008. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry