North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State Cross Country Runs Strong At NCAA Pre-Nationals
10/14/2006 12:00:00 AM | Cross Country
NC State’s men’s and women’s cross country teams both established themselves as legitimate national contenders by running exceptionally strong races Saturday at the 2006 NCAA Pre-Nationals. The Wolfpack women, ranked No. 5 in the latest national poll, handily won the Pre-National Women’s White Race by 59 points over third-ranked Michigan. The 13th-ranked NC State men ran in the Pre-National Blue Men’s Race and finished third behind No. 4 Colorado and No. 27 Florida State.
The Pre-Nationals, hosted by Indiana State University at the same site as next month’s NCAA Championships, annually attracts most of the top cross country programs in the nation and is the biggest regular-season race in the college cross country season.
For the NC State women, senior Julia Lucas finished first in the White race with a time of 20:01.4 over the 6k course. Lucas won the White race by almost seven seconds, and her time would have taken first in the Blue race by 14 seconds. Sophomore Brittany Tinsley was seventh in a time of 20:23.3, and true freshman Bona Jones was 11th at 20:30.2. Completing the scoring for the Wolfpack women were junior Angelina Blackmon in 42nd place at 21:02.9 and junior Anne Wheatly in 56th place at 21:17.7.
"Our top three kids obviously ran very well," said associate head coach Laurie Henes, who coaches the NC State women's team. "Julia ran a great race, really fast, and she was really excited about winning. And Brit (Tinsley) and Bona (Jones) both ran really strong races. So we're running really well at the front. The gap after that was still too big, but I think you're going to have some separation when you run as well up front as we did today.Angelina ran a good race in the fourth spot, and Anne Wheatly helped keep the gap from being too large this time with a good performance in the fifth spot."
It seems that the men and women ran opposite races, but with similarly strong results. The men did not run as well at the front of the pack as the women did, but ran much tighter as a group from 1-7. Junior Tibor Vegh paced the Wolfpack, finishing 23rd in a time of 24:07.4, a hair’s width ahead of senior Bryce Ruiz, 24th at 24:08.3. Junior Stephen Furst was 31st at 24:12.9, junior John Crews 35th at 24:16.8, junior Wesley Smith 39th at 24:22.5, junior Chris Kollar 45th at 24:26.1, and sophomore Gavin Coombs 50th at 24:28.6, meaning the gap between NC State first runner and its seventh was 21.2 seconds.
"In these next races we have coming up, we're going to have to a better job of penetrating into that group of leaders at the front of the race," Wolfpack head coach Rollie Geiger said. "We are running well as a group, 1-7, and that is a goal for us in each race, but we need to have several athletes penetrate that front group to lower our overall score. With all that said, however, we're obviously running really well right now. I don't want it to sound like I'm displeased because I'm not, but we are going to have to keep improving."
The Wolfpack men and women will go back into training over the next two weeks and will return to action on October 28 at the ACC Championships in Charlottesville, Va.
