STILLWATER, Okla. (U-WIRE) -- The Oklahoma State Cowgirls cross country season ended Saturday at the District V Championship, and coach Rene Sepulveda was already looking forward to track season.

The Cowgirls will start track season in early December, and Sepulveda is optimistic that the track team will perform better than the cross country team. Sepulveda was ready for the the Cowgirls to get back two redshirt cross country runners to run distance during track season and the infusion of jumping and throwing to the meets.

"Now we go to track and we move on," Oklahoma State track coach Rene Sepulveda. "The girls that I've redshirted for the cross country season are coming back for track and that will help a lot in our distance group. Then I have a couple more girls coming in in January and then we've got all the jumpers and the throwers. So track is going to be a lot better for us."

The cross country team was hurt this year after many of the top runners left before the season when the coaching situation was up in the air.

The team was left with mostly freshman walk-on runners. On Saturday, the team was led by Catherine Clifford who finished 59th in the 161 runner field.

The freshman runners had a tough time with the training all season, according to Sepulveda.

"All the rest of the girls are pretty much all freshman, and the training is kind of tough especially to make it all the way through, and these are the same girls that I had at the beginning of the year all the way to the end.

"So that's pretty amazing that some of the freshman girls could make it all the way through because most teams don't do that. Like on Coach Weis' team, they had one freshman and he held him out until the very end."

The Cowgirls will look to solid coaching during track season for improvement.

Sepulveda has a proven record of improving teams from his time at SMU, and he added two assistant track coaches that are among the nation's best.

Teri Steer will coach the Cowgirl throwers and was the 2002 USA Indoor and Outdoor champion in the shot put. She was also a two-time NCAA champion at SMU.

Zivile Pukstiene will coach the Cowgirl jumpers and is a former Lithuanian national champion.

With one of the better cross country courses in the nation and a good coaching staff, Sepulveda is optimistic about recruiting this year.

"It should be easy to recruit," Sepulveda said. "We'll kinda know more in the spring after we know who we've signed, that kinda thing."

The Cowgirls had an unsuccessful cross country season, but Sepulveda said the team will improve next year with the addition of recruits and more experience for the young runners.

Sepulveda built a winner at SMU and now faces yet another challenge.

"We've come out of it before and we'll come out of this," Sepulveda said.

(C) 2003 Daily O'Collegian via U-WIRE.