The ASU cross country team is more focused than ever, ready to begin the 2010 season and run its way into the national meet once again.
With only a few days to go before the first race of the season, the Sun Devils find themselves armed with health and leadership as they look to live up to the enormous expectations created by the legacy of ASU’s program.
“For us, it’s more about how we perform at the end of the year,“ said 7th-year coach Louie Quintana, whose teams garnered at-large bids to the NCAA Championships last year.
The Sun Devils lost a few key runners from last year, notably top women Allie Kieffer and Kari Hardt as well as All-American Brandon Bethke. However, ASU retains several runners that got them to the NCAA Championships last year.
Redshirt junior Dylan Hatcher, redshirt senior Ben Engelhardt, sophomore Nick Happe, sophomore Doug Smith, redshirt junior Daniel Lovell and redshirt sophomore Darius Terry will all lead a men’s team that is looking to surpass last year’s 19th place finish at nationals.
“We’re going to be a surprise, I think,” Quintana said of the men’s team.
The women’s charge will be led by experienced veterans junior Lindsay Prescott, junior Kauren Tarver and redshirt senior Cherise McNair. Also certain to make an impact are up and coming sophomore Alyssa Allison, redshirt junior transfer Eliza Gawryluk and redshirt junior Camille Olson, who continues to work herself into competition shape.
The women are gunning for their 13th straight NCAA Championships appearance.
Both the men (ranked 4th regionally) and women (5th) will compete in the season opener this Saturday at the George Kyte Invitational in Flagstaff. The high elevation challenge will be approached as a team-oriented effort, as all the Sun Devils will run together in the event.
“Our focus for this weekend is to just get a race in,” Quintana said. “We’ll go up there and treat it as kind of a workout day.”
After the opener in Flagstaff, ASU will head down to Tucson to compete in the Dave Murray Invitational on Sept. 17.
In what will prove to be ASU’s first real test of the year, the Sun Devils will race against a host UA team who, on the women’s side, is ranked higher in the regional rankings than ASU for the first time since Quintana took over the reins in 2004.
“In the last year and a half or so, it’s been fierce competition when we run against [UA], ” Quintana said of the rivalry.
Following the Murray Invitational, ASU’s season really starts to get going Sept. 25, when the top women’s runners will head to the Roy Griak Invitational in Minneapolis, a premier national meet that will give the lady Sun Devils a good idea as to where they stand among some of the nation’s best squads.
On Oct. 1, ASU’s top men will head to an out of state competition of their own, the Notre Dame Invitational in South Bend, Ind. Meanwhile, in Mesa, the rest of the squad will host the ASU Invitational on the same day.
Both the Griak and the Notre Dame Invites are the Sun Devil’s first chances to earn points for the year-end national meet.
By running against teams outside of the West Region, in which ASU competes, the Sun Devils will be able to begin building their case to be an at-large bid come time for nationals.
“It’s a huge meet for us in terms of trying to really state our case at the end of the year,” Quintana said of both Griak and Notre Dame. “We’re looking at being an at-large team, so we need to beat other teams from outside our region.”
The West Region consists of teams from a variety of conferences, but most of ASU’s threats will come from within the Pac-10.
Stanford, Washington, Oregon and Arizona will figure to nip at ASU’s heels all season long, just as they’ve done in recent years.
On October 16, the Sun Devils will travel to Terre Haute, Ind., for the NCAA Pre-National meet, a trip ASU hopes to make again for the NCAA Championships on Nov. 22nd.
“It’s a good checkpoint, certainly,” Quintana said of Pre-Nationals, which will be another opportunity for ASU to continue earning points to qualify for the championships.
Quintana continues to express confidence in the work ethic and ability of both the men and women to once again make it back to nationals and place in the top 15. All year long the concept of team will be stressed, as it has been all off-season.
“A lot is contingent on just really believing and staying confident,” Quintana said, adding that success will come with simply “staying healthy and staying patient, especially early in the season.”
Reach the reporter at kyle.j.newman@asu.edu
