University of Montana Invite
September 22, 2001

In our first trip to Montana for a cross country race, the warriors came through with good results for the day.  The men finished 8th out of 10 teams and finished ahead of D-1 Gonzaga and D-2 MSU-Billings.  Joe Donnellon led the warriors finishing the 8K course in 27:08.  He was followed by Chris (28:04), Ben (28:22), Nick Niemeyer (29:38) and Nick Rynearson (30:00).  The Montana course is rated a 4.0 on the difficulty scale, which means you would normally subtract 48 seconds from each indviduals time or 4 minutes from the team time in order to make comparisons with other individuals or teams.  Based on this, the men ran a faster team race than last weekend.  It should also be noted that Jeff Collins and Paul Carson did not run at Montana.

The women also did well finishing in 6th out of 9 schools.  Tausha Kuzmic again led the way on the 6000m course finishing in a time of 23:12.  She was followed by Emma (24:21), Lauren (24:44), Courtney (24:52), Lisa Paxton (24:53), Pam (25:40), Cristina (25:57) and Hillary (26:23).  The longer course and the altitude tooks it toll on the girls, but they still came through quite well.  Without Lisa Panian running (#5 last week), the team's average time was only 1 second slower after adjusting for course distance using Mercier Scoring Tables.    There is also a time adjustment for the women after conversion due to difficulty.

We had also increased mileage this last week by 10% for both teams, yet the effects of it didn't really show.  Exciting to see how we do in 2 weeks when we are rested.

Congratulations to the Women for being ranked #11 in the country this past week.
Our performances in Montana mirrored last week's almost identically, not counting that we were missing a runner, so we should maintain this spot in the Polls.

We are off next weekend, then we will compete in Salem, Oregon on the 6th of October.  This will be the most important race to date as there will be a number of other NAIA schools there, including ranked teams from Southern California and teams in our own region.

For complete results go to http://www.run-insight.com and click on the XC Results link.  You will find the Montana meet there.

Team Results

Men
Weber State  56
Idaho State  69
UTAH  72
Montana State  76
Montana  85
Ricks  152
MAA  203
LCSC  226
Gonzaga  265
MSU-Billings  308

Women
Montana  40
MSU  41
Ricks  75
Utah  102
ISU  107
LCSC  155
MSU-Billings  229
Gonzaga  230
Flathead  279

Sorry for not typing up all the individual results myself, but it has been a long weekend.

Cheers and Godspeed...
 
 

Coach Collins