Cross country travels, places 7th, 8th

Despite a rainy Saturday morning in Bronx, N.Y., Taylor Roeck, Meghan Wetterhall and Whitney Sweet spearheaded the Georgia College finishers in the Fordham Fiasco race.

Roeck completed the race 16th overall, the best GC finish, with a final time of 21:02 at the 5K race.

“I thought it was pretty good, it was definitely a challenge because of a rain and it was really hard, but I handled pretty well for the weather and the conditions and it was just a fun race overall,” Roeck said.

This was the first collegiate race for the three athletes.

“I thought we did very well considering the fact that it was the first collegiate race for three out of the five of us, and we raced on a course that we had never seen before,” junior Allison Lones said.

Wetterhall followed up just 12 seconds after Roeck with a time of 21:14 pushing her to 12th place overall.

“The conditions for the race were bad and the course was a difficult one, so even though my time was slower than I was used to I was happy with my race. Because of the weather, we didn’t get in as good of a warm-up as I would have liked so it took me a good mile to get into the race,”

Wetterhall said. “Plus I haven’t raced competitively since last November. Getting in the racing mindset always takes a few races.”

Victoria Dobson finished in 22:53 and brought home 74th place overall for the

Bobcats.

The GC junior, two-time All-Peach Belt Conference, and 2011 All-Southeast Regional runner, Lones, finished the race 49th overall with a completion time of 22:00.

GC women’s cross country placed eighth out of the 12 teams competing in the race and had an average time of 21:43.

“I was pleased with finishing eighth as a team,” said Lones. “We are always wanting to improve and get better. I’d like to see us run more as a pack.”

Lones is looking forward to the future of the cross country team.

“I would like to see our team finish in the top four at conference and see more of us qualify for region,” Lones said. “Individually, I would like to break another record and help make one of my teammates better.”

The men’s cross country team finished in a slightly better position that the women’s team, ending the day at seventh place out of 13 teams with an average time of 29:28.

Out of the five Bobcats, three were freshman. The first four runners finished within a minute of each others.

Junior Philip Laskey and freshman Paul McNeil finished first and second respectively with less than one second separating them.

Junior Tucker Forbes completed the race with a time of 28:34, finishing just 30 seconds behind McNeil, which earned him 40th overall.

The Bobcats will be back at it again Sept. 14 where they will race some 830 miles closer in Macon, Ga. at the Mercer RunFit Invitational.

Posted by Hampton Pelton on Sep 13 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.