Ready to Go
September 17, 2008 05:27 PM | General
September 17, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – In two weeks West Virginia coach Sean Cleary is going to find out just how good his No. 6-rated cross country team is. The Paul Short Invitational in Bethlehem, Pa., on Oct. 3 will be the first time this year Cleary is running a full team.
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| Junior Marie-Louise Asselin will run her first race of the year on Oct. 3 at the Paul Shirt Invitational.
Dan Friend photo |
“Some of these girls are going crazy and they just want to race,” Cleary said.
By design the second-year head coach held out his top three runners during the first three weeks of the season. Junior Marie-Louise Asselin had endured an injury-plagued outdoor campaign last spring before Cleary decided to shut her down completely. Junior Keri Bland competed at the U.S. Olympic Trials in July after nine months of competitive running, and junior Clara Grandt also had a high-stress sophomore season. All three are national caliber performers.
“Most of them have had long summer seasons or their track seasons extended well into the summer and I wanted to give them a break and build them up properly to give them every opportunity to be at their peak at NCAAs,” Cleary explained.
Cleary’s philosophy is to have his team performing at its best during the last 10 weeks of the season.
“Starting two days ago it was 10 weeks to the NCAA championships. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves, but we’re definitely planning to be at the national championships in November,” he said. “During the second half of those 10 weeks we’ve got five major cross country races: The Paul Short Invitational, Penn State National Open, Big East, the regional championships and then the national championships.
“My personal philosophy is four championship-level cross country meets is more than enough to prepare us for the national championships,” Cleary said.
In the meantime, West Virginia, which placed ninth at NCAAs last year, has been able to display the remarkable depth it has managed to develop in such a short period of time. Four years ago Cleary was begging runners to come out to fill a seven-person lineup. Today, West Virginia has one of the largest teams in the country with 24 runners on its roster. Eighteen of those 24 hail from West Virginia and 13 come from within a 50-mile radius of Morgantown. The other six are Canadians, giving WVU one of the most unique rosters in the country.
One of the local girls, Morgantown freshman Ahna Lewis, finished second at the Princeton Invitational last weekend with a time of 21:53.10 to help the Mountaineers to a fourth place finish.
In addition to West Virginia, Princeton, Villanova, Georgetown and other top teams in the region opted to hold out some of their best runners for the race. Still, Lewis beat some pretty good college performers.
“What was a little bit misleading was Princeton put on their training shoes and ran a tempo run – more of a workout than a race,” Cleary mentioned. “Georgetown held out a few, Villanova held out their top two kids but with that being said, Ahna beat a lot of girls that were all-region last year – probably five or six girls. In our four, five, six and seven spots last year we didn’t have any all-region runners.
“Looking at it that way, our team depth in those four spots we are far deeper than we were last year,” Cleary said.
Heading into this season Lewis wasn’t even being counted on to crack the team’s top seven. She had an injury-plagued high school career at Morgantown High School, failing to even make the all-state team her junior and senior seasons. But Cleary knew with the right training Lewis had the talent to be an outstanding collegiate runner.
“When she came here I redshirted her in the fall and she made an outstanding progression through the winter months. She actually qualified for the ECACs last winter as an individual and then we put her right back on the redshirt game during outdoors,” Cleary said. “She got a full year of top-notch training in. The key with Ahna was not would she be in good enough shape to do what she did the other day, but more so could she handle the pressure of a big cross country meet? I was very excited that she was able to handle the pressure of that race.”
Cleary says there is a distinct split between the team’s top three performers Asselin, Bland and Grandt and the next four consisting of Lewis, Jessica O’Connell (University of Calgary transfer), Kaylyn Christopher and Kate Harrison.
“The next four girls are identical. Right now they are interchangeable until we actually race the whole group together,” he said. “That’s what is kind of exciting because I can’t pick who my four and five are.”
Cleary is hoping at least one of them can move closer to the team’s top three.
“My guess is those four are probably running about 35-45 seconds back of the top three. My hope is that one of them can separate themselves and close the gap,” Cleary said. “If one of them can do that then this is going to be a really fun team to watch.”
Cleary said Morgantown’s Maria Dalzot, a key performer on last year’s Big East championship team, will redshirt this season to take care of a nagging foot problem. Team captain and the team’s lone senior Alison Spiker, and Karly Hamric, an All-American on last year’s distance medley relay team, are going to have to continue to work hard to crack the top nine in order to compete at this year’s Big East championships. That is just how deep this year’s team is.
“We’ve got some really good runners that may not be in our lineup,” Cleary said. “When we line up for those big meets we finally have depth at the five through seven spots.”
Cleary said Princeton is still the team to beat in the region. Like West Virginia, the Tigers have their entire lineup returning. They also have the distinct advantage of running the regional race on their home course.
“Princeton last year beat us easily at Paul Short. At nationals their No. 1 girl stumbled home and she lost 100 spots in the last three minutes. At the last checkpoint Princeton was in fourth and we were in 19th,” Cleary said. “We moved to ninth and they moved down to 14th so we sneaked by them. They don’t lose anybody and we don’t lose anybody so I still figure they are favored to win the regional.”
But that doesn’t mean West Virginia won’t show up and give them a run for their money.
“I trust this group. They don’t choke,” Cleary said. “They run to their capabilities every time they run so if we are good enough we will prove it in the next month or two.”
