Mid-Atlantic Champions
November 14, 2004 03:19 PM | General
November 14, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia women’s cross country coach Jeff Huntoon admits he was hoping his team would finish second at yesterday’s 24-school Mid-Atlantic Cross Country Regional at Penn State University.
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| Megan Metcalfe finished fourth to lead WVU to its first Mid-Atlantic Regional cross country title.
TrackShark.com photo |
The team’s goal from the beginning of the season was to place second and advance to the NCAA championships for the first time in four years. Never in his wildest dreams did he think his team could win it.
“We went there to get second. It was how close can we match a Princeton and make sure a Georgetown or a Villanova doesn’t sneak up in there?” Huntoon stated.
“I think Georgetown had a tradition of like 16 straight years going to NCAAs and now that’s broken,” he added. “The last time we went to NCAAs in 2000 we broke Villanova’s tradition of going to NCAAs.”
West Virginia outdistanced both those teams and Princeton to become the first WVU team since Marty Pushkin’s men’s team in 1983 to win a regional cross country race.
“The Princeton coach was telling his girls that (West Virginia) has got everything to gain by going out there and doing well,” Huntoon said. “We really hadn’t gotten any quality points during the year, especially with the way things turned out yesterday. If we would have gotten third we would have gotten shut out (of qualifying for nationals) again.”
Both Villanova and Georgetown (finishing second and fourth respectively on Saturday) placed ahead of West Virginia at the Big East championships two weeks ago.
“I think finishing where we did in the Big East was a blessing in disguise because we were so close to everybody and we knew we gave up 15, 20 or 30 points.
“We ran so much better and it was all seven of them,” Huntoon said.
If you had to circle one athlete on West Virginia’s result sheet it would have to be senior Jennifer Davis, who ran the race of her career. The Romney, W.Va., native finished the 6K course with a time of 21:15 to place sixth, two spots behind WVU’s top runner Megan Metcalfe with a time of 20:54 (Metcalfe won this race as a sophomore in 2002).
Senior Tara Struyk, held out of the Big East meet to get totally healthy for regionals, placed eighth with a time of 21:21, followed by Davis’ twin sister Susan who finished 13th with a time of 21:31.
“When we went through the first mile and Jen and Tara were right together with Megan I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh!’” Huntoon said. “It was cold and Penn State wore a different jersey. You had a lot of different colors going on and there is so much blue out there anyway. The big one we were looking for was the black of Princeton.
“It looked like we had them covered for the most part, especially for the first two miles. From two to about three-and-a-half miles things got interesting. It just seemed to me as they were going by that Princeton had us; one person ahead of us, one person ahead of us.”
But West Virginia’s top four runners were able to stay close together, while numbers five, six and seven (Jennifer Kemp, Devon Plesuk and Rachel Carden) were each able to place in the top 50. When the race was over Huntoon was doing the math in his head and he knew his team was close to the top three.
“I was counting it up and doing it real fast and I had 73 points in my head,” he said. “I was running around and nobody was saying anything because it was really close. I finally hooked up with (assistant) Sean Cleary and I asked, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘I think we’re either first or third.’ I wasn't even thinking first … I was thinking second to qualify for nationals.”
Huntoon couldn’t take the suspense so he jogged down to where the officials were tallying up the final results to be posted for the teams to view. He knew the other teams weren’t jumping up and down like they had won the meet.
“We were hanging around with the Georgetown and Villanova people. I knew someone from Lehigh who was one of the NCAA reps,” Huntoon said. “They were walking across to post the results officially and I was trying to be patient. They were tight-lipped and smiling at me. I’m like, ‘What is that all about … you’ve got to tell me something.’ One of the other officials kind of gave me a quick look at the official results and I sprinted back across the field and told the team.”
“Of course it’s unofficial,” Huntoon told the team. “But I think we won.”
When Huntoon gave them the news they went crazy. Some were jumping up and down while others were crying. “It has literally been a four-year endeavor,” Huntoon said. “The past two years we’ve been so close and were always the first team out.”
Of the nine regional winners, West Virginia was the only one not ranked among FinishLynyx Top 25. The Mountaineers were rated 28th in the most recent poll released Nov. 2. That is sure to change when the next rankings are released.
West Virginia will be making its third-ever appearance at nationals, last going in 2000 under Pushkin, who also led a women’s team to nationals in 1997.
This year’s race will take place at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind., on Monday morning, Nov. 22.
Huntoon says winning the regionals and qualifying for nationals will be a big boost to the national perception of his senior-dominated program.
“You talk about recruiting,” he said. “We’re talking to three or four really good kids. They were waiting to see what was going to happen with us and the program and this win certainly helps. I want kids to come to West Virginia for all the right reasons. I don’t want good kids to come here and then be disappointed and leave. This has got to help.”
