Room to Run

Sept. 3, 2007

By Carolyn Braff

CSTV.com

	Carolyn Braff Carolyn is an assistant editor and writer for CSTV.com. E-mail here!

        ---   Column Archive   --- SOFTBALL 01/24: Modeling The Right Role FOOTBALL 01/15: Getting Somewhere 01/07: The Home Team vs. The Road Warrior 01/01: Singing The Maize And Blues 12/27: Up-Downs For Texas 12/18: Lying In Wait 12/11: Warrior Green: The New Boise Blue 12/8: Best Of The Rest 12/4: A Winning Preparation 11/27: Easy Road To The Big Easy 11/20: Running The Backup and Crashing 11/13: Least Common Denominators 11/6: Throw The Ducks A Bone 10/30: Boise Is Back 10/23: They've Got Guts 10/16: Kansas Full of Cupcakes 10/9: Pay Attention To The Men Behind The Curtain 10/2: Not-Such-Surprises 9/25: Irish Inflation 9/18: The Star and The Slump 9/11: Four's No Crowd 9/4: Unmatched Matchups 8/22: No Peterson, No Problem For Oklahoma 8/22: Catch Him If You Can 8/21: Running A Reverse 8/20: Big 12 Conference Preview 8/8: Still No Cigar 8/8: Going and Coming 8/8: C-USA Conference Preview 6/17: Pennsylvania Wins Not-So-Big 33 LACROSSE 5/5: Tigers Limp Into Playoffs 4/7: Home, Sweet Home 3/3: Hoyas Hold On For Another Win 2/16: Accelerating Development 2/15: One More Chance For This Mid 2/12: Wildcats Favored For Three in a Row BASKETBALL 3/21: Winona State Still Streaking in Postseason 3/19: Cruising to Perfection 1/14: Penn Has The Tempo To a T 1/12: Columbia Thwarts The Three, Downs Princeton FENCING 3/25: A Rematch to Be Remembered 3/23: Columbia Hopes to Take Two CROSS COUNTRY 9/7: Luck Be A Lambie 9/4: Bringing Charm To The Farm 9/4: Breaking In 9/3: Room to Run GOLF 6/13: Looking The Part

Pete Rozelle might as well have been talking about cross country - on any given day on the course, any team really can win. And nowhere does that adage hold truer than in looking at the 2007 field of men's competitors.

"The thing about our sport is every year somebody new comes along," Iona head coach Mick Byrne said. "Some team loads up and will have a good recruiting year. You only need five runners to cross that line. If you look at the national championships over the years, you don't always have to run super, you've just got to run well. Anybody that can get five runners across the line in the top 40-50, you're going to do really well in that meet."

1. Colorado

The reigning national champions return four runners from their seven-man title team, including top finisher Brent Vaughn, who took 12th overall at nationals, and Stephen Pifer, who finished 20th at last year's race. With two standouts from seasons past in seniors Pifer and Vaughn and a top-notch group of recruits, headlined by Richard Medina, all headed to Boulder, head coach Mark Wetmore is not worried about finding replacements for his graduated seniors.

"Too many to name," Wetmore said of the up-and-coming runners he expects to contribute to this year's team. "There's a lot of returning people that were right on the threshold of being varsity contributors for us and then we're excited about some new folks coming in. It probably adds up to about 10 or 12 guys that are contending for those three or four spots."

2.  Wisconsin

2006 runner-up Wisconsin is again in good shape, returning five of its top seven, including No. 1 runner Stuart Eagon, who finished 11th at nationals, and No. 3 Matt Winthrow, who finished 24th. Eagon competed unattached his freshman year, so he has junior eligibility as a senior. The Badgers had 13 freshmen on the roster in 2006, all of whom should be in a position to contribute this season.

3. Oregon

Reigning Pac-10 champion Oregon should be particularly potent this year, returning five of its top seven, including top runner Galen Rupp, who took sixth at nationals and earned Pac-10 Athlete of the Year honors. Rupp will get support from sophomore Diego Mercado, last year's conference Newcomer of the Year and Oregon's No. 2 finisher at nationals, crossing in 49th place.

4. Iona

One of few East Coast schools to have success at nationals, Iona returns six of its top seven runners, led by junior Mohamed Khadraoui. Junior Harbert Okuti has returned to training after an injury kept him off of his feet since last November, and with his international experience, Okuti should be a major contributor as long as he stays healthy. Junior Andrew Ledwith and seniors Abraham Ng'etich and Mathew Kiplagat will most likely round out the top five for the Gaels.

Iona also has a talented field of redshirted athletes waiting to break into the lineup, including freshman Noel Bateman, who ran for the United States at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in 2006.

"The thing about our team is that we're fairly deep," Byrne said. "There's any one of 10 guys that could be in the top seven once we get going in November."

5. Stanford

Stanford is always a threat at the national level, and 2007 should be no different. The Cardinal returns its top four runners, including redshirt senior Neftalem Araia, last year's second-place finisher, and feels overdue for a championship after not returning to the podium since winning back-to-back titles in 2002-03. With four redshirt seniors on the roster, Stanford should have the experience to move up in the standings, barring injury.

Several runners placed remarkably high at the championship meet without a team running behind them: Northern Arizona junior Lopez Lomong is a name to follow this season, as the independent finished fourth at nationals last season.

Top Meets

Every NCAA program undoubtedly has November 19 circled on the calendars, the date of the 69th annual cross country championships, and for some programs, nothing else matters.

"Everything we do will point towards and focus on both Pac-10 and national NCAA championships," Stanford head coach Peter Tegen said. "All the other meets are really nothing but a station towards that goal."

Although Colorado has five meets on the schedule before its conference championship, as opposed to Stanford's  three, the Buffs do not prepare for those early meets the same way they prepare for Big 12 or national competition.

"Every program uses those meets differently," Wetmore said of the early season meets. "In our program they're really just developmental slash training exercises."

The nature of the NCAA qualifying system means that teams that are not guaranteed to win their geographical region (and the accompanying automatic nationals bid) focus their schedules on large-scale meets in which they have the opportunity to go head-to-head with competitors from other regions. Points are awarded based on the team's performance in those multi-region meets, and 13 teams receive at-large bids to the championship meet based on their season points total.

The trend has resulted in a much heavier emphasis on large-scale invitationals across the country, and the NCAA pre-nationals meet on the championship course in Terre Haute, Ind. is the king of them all. Defending champion Colorado will participate in only one big invitational this year - and pre-NCAAs is it.

"Probably 80 per cent of all the men's and women's NCAA final participant teams will be at that meet, so we'll accidentally see everybody else's performances at that meet," says Wetmore. "But we really only go there to see our own performances. It's an opportunity to preview the course, to fine-tune our operations over the race weekend and an opportunity for the athletes to have individual race plans, execute them and evaluate them when it's all over."

Iona takes a different tact, pushing its runners to train hard on their own course much further into the season.

"We're not always real excited about getting our guys involved in real head-to-head stuff until at least October," Byrne said. "While a lot of teams are backing off of their training in September, we continue doing heavy training in September, and they're not always ready to race."

Aside from the pre-NCAAs, a few other invitationals are worth following, as they are consistently on the radar of the nation's top coaches, whether or not their team participates. Topping this year's list are the Notre Dame Invitational (September 28), Oregon's Bill Dellinger Invitational (September 29), Minnesota's Roy Griak invitational (September 29) and Arkansas' Chili Pepper invitational (October 13).

With so few competitions in the season, the championship is at stake every time the runners take the line. With the given day set for November 19, every team is in a position to win.