The ASU cross country team left Saturday’s Pac-10 Championships in Seattle with a pair of harriers taking home conference honors, but was once again disappointed at the team’s overall performance.
The men took fifth overall in the 8k race and the women placed seventh in the 6k. Stanford swept both team titles at Jefferson Park Golf Course, edging UA (second) and Oregon (third) on the women’s side and Oregon (second) and California (third) on the men’s side.
“Our expectations are always very high and our realistic goal was to be top five on the women’s side and top three on the men’s side,” ASU coach Louie Quintana said. “We didn't accomplish either of those objectives.”
Junior Lindsay Prescott (20:17.52) continued her stellar season with a ninth place finish, good for First Team All-Pac-10 honors. Redshirt senior Ben Engelhardt placed 14th overall to earn Second Team All-Pac-10 honors on the men’s side.
“It was pretty awesome,” Prescott said of her first Pac-10 accolades. “Everything’s paying off, all the summer conditioning and all that, and everything’s finally coming together.”
Engelhardt (23:53.65), who replicated his finish from last year’s meet, was pleased with his individual results and said that the men remain confident in themselves.
“We’ve had some setbacks, but we haven’t given up yet,“ Engelhardt said.
While the Sun Devils were largely unable to capitalize on their frontrunners’ successes, Quintana said that ASU is continuing to make progress and that they know what they need to do to improve.
“We need a collective grittiness from the women; we need to focus on racing with a clear mind,” Quintana said. “The men need to just keep progressing.”
Cherise McNair (39th, 21:09.05), Alyssa Allison (43rd, 21:19.16), Kate Lydy (51st, 21:32.45) and Karlee Owens (56th, 21:42.81) rounded out the scorers for the women.
Despite these results, Prescott stressed the importance for the women to remain tough during these last few weeks.
“We need to collect ourselves, and we need to run like it’s our last race,” Prescott said. “If we run like that, anything can happen.”
On the men’s side, ASU seems to have made progress from Pre-Nationals a few weeks ago, as Quintana was especially pleased with the back end of the Sun Devil scorers.
“I was pleased how the guys stepped up from [scoring slots] three through five — they are not typically the athletes that we were expecting to be there,” Quintana said.
Darius Terry (23rd, 24:06.7), Daniel Lovell (30th, 24:19.66), Steven Schnieders (40th, 24:37.55) and Matt Boughton (42nd, 24:41.07) rounded out ASU’s top five.
Time is quickly running out on ASU to finally peak and put it all together.
“We really are a team that is trying to find an identity,” Quintana said. “We want to be great, but we have to be able to execute when the chips are down.”
ASU will continue to train hard and fight for an NCAA Championship slot as long as there is still an opportunity to turn the ship around.
“Our focus is on team improvement, and racing hard for the 10k,” Quintana said.
The Sun Devils' next competition will be in two weeks when they travel to Springfield, Ore., for the NCAA West Regional Championships, where an automatic trip to NCAA Nationals will be up for grabs for the top two teams.
Reach the reporter at kyle.j.newman@asu.edu
