Willamette 2001
Salem, Oregon

In the biggest single collegiate race west of the mississippi, the LCSC cross country teams ran in a race that will be even bigger and more competitive than nationals.  I believe there were 22 ranked teams in both races, either NAIA, NCAA or Junior College.  The LCSC women finished in 9th out of 36 non Division 1 schools and just behind #13 Westmont College of California.  I feel that if we hadn't gotten pinched at the start, we might have been able to beat them, but those kinds of things happen in big races.  Hopefully we will have learned from that and it will make us a better team in the future.  LCSC had 8 women under 20 minutes with an average time for the first 5 of 19:11.  A lot of PR's were set this day.  Tausha led the team finishing in 18:34, followed by Courtney (19:15), Lauren (19:18), Emma (19:20), Lisa Panian (19:28), Pam (19:41), Lisa Paxton (19:44) and Cristina (19:49).  Katie and Hillary rounded it out for the Warriors, both just missing getting under 20 finishing in 20:04 and 20:11.

The men had their best race of the year as a group as well.  Chris had a break out race finishing in a blistering 25:44 over the 8K course.  The first warrior to break the 26 minute barrior.  He was followed by Joe (26:13), Ben (26:15), Jeff (26:59), Nick Niemeyer (27:15), Nick Rynearson (28:12) and Paul (28:12).  The team average time was 26:29.  The fastest team time in LCSC history.  This time can be compared very favorably with teams in the national polls between 12 and 20.  The Northwest Region is very deep this year with 4 probable top 10 team in our region.  Both Seattle U and our team should be top 25 teams, but it is often hard to get that attention when the other 4 are getting all of the press.  Our rater is aware of our team and these results should be pretty favorable to both Seattle's team and ours getting votes this next week.

We host our meet next weekend, which should be a low key race with only 1 or 2 other teams in attendance.  We will be running out at Hell's Gate State Park.  Always a challenging place to run.

The following week we are off to Issaquah, WA for our regional Preview race.  Our women are currently ranked #14 in the country and will hopefully move up after this weekend's performance.

You can see this weeks results on the web at http://run-down.com/bearcats/wu.php