ECAC Champion
May 19, 2008 12:12 PM | General
May 18, 2008
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| Grandt | Bland |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Clara Grandt has performed well during her two years running track at West Virginia University. Now she can add a big-meet victory to her growing list of accomplishments.
Last Saturday night the Doddridge County resident won the 10,000-meter run at the ECAC Championships in Princeton, N.J., with a time of 34:15.07. She did so by lapping the entire field.
“I didn’t expect to lap the entire field,” Grandt said. “I was going for the next person and I just started lapping people. It wasn’t quite like a race because I was by myself from the start. It was almost like a tempo run or a training run.
“It was really exciting. It was my first big win,” Grandt said. “It is something I can see myself getting better at the 10K. I just want to keep working on it now.”
Her time broke a 28-year meet record and was the second fastest time in school history. Grandt is now ranked 23rd on the national performance list in the 10K with a time that should be good enough to qualify her for the NCAA Championships.
Coach Sean Cleary has taken a careful approach with Grandt this year. His initial plan was to run her in the 10K at Stanford on April 4 to get a qualifying time and then to run her at the Big East Championships on May 2. Both times he changed his mind.
“Early in the season my plan was to run her at Stanford in the 10K and get her national qualifier out of the way at that point and then it was to run again at the Big East Championships,” he said. “Two minutes before the declaration period at Big East I pulled her out of the 10 and put her in the 5. Really I was looking ahead at the weather forecast. I thought she could do equally as well in the 5K.”
As for last weekend’s 10K, first she had to qualify which she eventually did two weeks ago at Wheeling Jesuit. “She ran a nice steady race and it didn’t take a lot out of her having to come back six days later,” Cleary said.
Cleary is using the same plan with Grandt that has been so successful with other distance runners he’s developed in the past.
“I’ve kept a lot of the runners that I’ve coached in the lower distances for a few years before moving them up to what I believe is their specialty,” Cleary said. “You don’t need practice at it - you just need to be fit enough to do it. Her weakness is that she’s not very fast.”
Grandt wasn’t the only ECAC winner for the Mountaineers. Fairview’s Keri Bland claimed the 1,500 with a time of 4:19.02, having already secured a top time of 4:17 in the semifinals.
What is it about these small-town West Virginia girls performing well at big meets?
“I don’t know,” Grandt smiled. “I guess we’ve got determination and we want to make ourselves known. We keep working at it and the hard work is paying off.
“We all ran against each other in high school and we were kind of competitive against each other,” Grandt added. “Once we got on the same team there is still that same competitiveness but we’re all working together and making our team better.”
According to Cleary, Bland’s approach in the 1,500 semifinals was to go out early and run the fastest possible race she could.
“Keri is almost born to be a frontrunner and we had a plan in the prelims of going to the front and running as hard as she could,” Cleary said. “That’s just the way she likes to run but she’s not good enough to run away from the national field.”
This spring West Virginia doesn’t have a lot of depth and one of its frontline runners – Marie-Louise Asselin - is using a redshirt this year, but Cleary has at least four big-time performers that could reach nationals next month.
Grandt and Bland, two state natives, are almost assured a spot after their performances this weekend. Another West Virginia girl, Chelsea Carrier, has a great opportunity to qualify for nationals in the 100-meter hurdles. Cleary was hopeful that Carrier could also earn a qualifying score in the heptathlon but it appears she may be a few points short.
Cleary said Carrier’s race in the hurdles portion of the heptathlon was outstanding, though.
“It was terrible weather and she still posted her second fastest time in the hurdles and basically blew everyone away,” Cleary said.
Freshman high jumper Katelyn Williams has the nation’s 26th best performance this year at 1.77 meters. Cleary said she is very close to qualifying.
“If she can climb one more bar during the outdoor season she will be at the national championships,” he said.
As for his distance runners, Cleary believes Bland, Grandt and Asselin could one day be the best running trio in school history.
“Last year when I had those three at the regional championships people were thinking, OK, young freshman girls. They can run fast but let’s see where they are in two or three years,” Cleary said. “We’re lucky in that we have a group of girls that consistently continue to improve. These three are destined to be the best one-two-three punch we’ve ever had here. They can handle big meets. They train well; they eat well and take care of themselves.”
“Even though we don’t have a large number of runners all of us have done something significant for the team. If we bring a lot of people to nationals … that’s where the other teams thin out because only the better people make it,” Grandt said.
