The ASU cross country team makes its first trip east of the Arizona state line to South Bend, Indiana, for the Notre Dame Invitational Friday.
After the meet in Tucson on Sept. 5, coach Louie Quintana suggests the men run as a team.
“With the men, our focus is to just run a team race, run together as a group and not overthink it,” head coach Louie Quintana said. “I think for us to be in the top five at this meet is really sort of a reasonable goal and anything above that would be a bonus.”
Junior Jenna Maack said that the girls are looking to run as a pack on Friday in Indiana.
“We’ve been working on staying together during our workouts and running as a team,” Maack said. “If we can really focus on being a team during the race, then we can all finish kind of in the top of the group and really score pretty well up there.”
Maack said the beautiful weather in South Bend will make for perfect conditions on race day.
“I think we’re all just really excited to get into some weather that’s under 70 degrees,” Maack said. “(It will) really play into our favor because we’re used to running in the heat, so we’re used to the tough conditions and then this will be the perfect conditions for racing.”
Quintana said between the Tucson and South Bend meets, he has seen improvement on the mid-course race management.
“What we’re really trying to do is put a complete race together,” Quintana said. “I believe we are prepared for that. Our training has indicated that we are ready to do that. Now it’s just a matter of mentally putting ourselves in the right spot to be able to accomplish that.”
ASU redshirt senior captain Ryan Herson, who took first place overall at the Dave Murray Invitational in Tucson on Sept. 18, said the Sun Devil men have had a good two weeks of practice since the Tucson meet.
“(We’re) really prepared for this meet to run well and kind of excited to … show some improvement through our guys and kind of see what we can do against some different teams,” Herson said.
Herson said he is looking forward to wearing maroon and gold on Friday at Notre Dame.
“I’m just looking forward to putting the Arizona State jersey on and competing to my best and really running with some of my teammates and trying to do the best I can for this team,” Herson said.
Related Links:
ASU cross country sweeps Dave Murray Invitational in Tucson
ASU cross country freshman Samantha Ortega Shines in Debut
Reach the reporter at michael.baron@asu.edu or follow @Michael_Baron96 on Twitter.
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