Whitman Invite
September 15, 2001

After a long hard week of training the LCSC cross country team made the 2 hour trek to Walla Walla to compete in the Whitman Invite. Both teams were excited about racing and the opportunity to match up with some nationally ranked NAIA teams.

On the women's side, NNU came into the meet as the #18 ranked team in the country. Although the Lady Warriors were aware of both them and the EOU women, their main focus was to race out front and let the chips fall  where they may. When the last runner had crossed the finish line the race plan had worked well as the warrior won their first invitational ever and finished in front of NNU who finished 3^rd on the day. The Warriors were led by freshman, Tausha Kuzmic who won the race in a time of 18:51. Three other warriors finished in the top ten (Lauren, Courtney and Emma) with Lisa Panian right on their tails in 11^th place. The women had 4 girls cross the line before NNU's 2^nd, and had 8 in before their 5^th. This should indicate the depth of the LCSC team at the national level. Courtney Copenhaver ran extremely well, considering her limited training time due to tendonitis in her big toe. Furthermore, this was the first race back for Lisa Paxton and Pam Houston, last year's #1 and #4 runners. They are both at about 80% and should continue to get into better shape as the season goes on. Both are recovering from stress fractures over the summer so their training has been slow and cautious. Cristina Pereira also raced for the first time for the warriors after red-shirting last season, she is also coming off of a hip injury sustained on the first day of practice. She too will be racing herself back into shape. We should see the Lady Warriors move into the national rankings next week, and should enter somewhere between #12 to #17, based on the performances of other teams out there.

Congratulations to both Lauren Wright and Emma Linehan who both PR'd on Saturday, but also met the performance requirement for NAIA Academic All-American. LCSC has had at least one academic all-american every year that a runner has met the Junior year eligibility requirements.

On the men's side of things, the game plan was the same--to go out and run with the lead pack and hang on for as long as possible, hopefully to the end. Joe Donnellon was able to do this and finished 9^th overall in a time of 26:43. Chris Patterson stayed with him for the first 2 miles, then ran into some problems with some medications he has been taking to fight off a stomach virus, but was still able to finish the race. Ben Anderson had a break out race today for the warriors as he was the #2 man on the day. LC ran without Jeff Collins (last week's #3 runner) and Paul Carson. Had Jeff been running and Chris finished in the same position he did last week the warriors would have finished in 3^rd. Not too bad, considering that NNU will probably be in the top 3-5 in the nation next week and EOU is currently ranked #7. Although it will be difficult to convince the raters that we belong in the top 25, we will still get an opportunity to prove it. Next weekend the men are running on the University of Montana's course, a course known by the NAIA raters. Although we will still be without Jeff, based on the results and a solid performance from the team, further consideration should be earned. The next big opportunity will be at Willamette, where a number NAIA teams will be competing, including some from Region II (California).

WOMEN'S TEAM SCORING
1. Lewis-Clark State College 33
2. Whitworth College 42
3. Northwest Nazarene 64
4. Whitman College 77
5. Eastern Oregon 130
Spokane Falls --
Treasure Valley --
*note there has been a scoring error. EOU was not included in the team scoring, but had 5 girls finish. The final race outcome will be updated once I receive the corrected version. They finished 5^th with a score of 130, but it is not known how it affected other teams.