North Carolina State University Athletics
Finishing Our Goal-Oriented Season (11/21/08)
11/21/2008 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
Hey everyone again, its been a long time since the last entry. Finally settling down after an emotional rough and hectic few weeks.
First, as everyone knows by now (hopefully) we finished second to Virginia at the conference championship held in Chapel Hill on Nov. 1. People may think that being second in the conference is a good thing and they may be happy for the program and NC State, but it was not what my teammates and I were looking for. The only thing that matters to the NC State cross country team is winning the conference championship.
No matter who we lost to graduation and who's doing what we always look for the "gold". Although exceeding some expectations we were picked as low as fourth it was still a disappointing day for the team, despite having a few good individual efforts, like Ryan Hill winning ACC Freshman of the Year.
I would have written sooner but the stress of the meet and classes that week was too much handle. Having test and presentations that week made it easy to forget the second-place effort.
Fast forward to this past weekend and again we had a chance to prove ourselves. This time at the NCAA Southeast Regional Championship in Clemmons, N.C. This time, we ran a 10k. (That's 6.2 miles for those of you not into the metric system. Of course, who is? The course conditions were very sloppy as it rained the entire day and night before the race at the Tanglewood Park.
We finished third behind William & Mary and Virginia, putting us on the outside looking in for the NCAA Championships, since only the top two teams from each regional automatically qualify for the national meet. The race went well for a few of us wolves but the gap between our top runners and the lower part of our lineup has hurt us much of the year.
Bobby Mack crossed the line first for the Wolfpack, finishing second behind potential NCAA Champion, Sam Chelanga. I finished eighth, though I thought I could have finished higher. What a rough final 400 meters I had. The end of that race was probably one of the most painful endings to any race I've ever run.
We knew we gave it a good shot, but we had to wait a day to find out if we would get an at-large bid into Monday's championship.Would we get a call that weekend about making it into nationals?
Yes, we did.
We made it into nationals, as we all thought we would and our preparation has not stopped. Every season we have the three same goals: win ACC Championship, qualify for the NCAA Championship, finish in the Top 10 nationally. So far we are 1-for-2, hoping to accomplish the final stage of goals. It will be a huge task and everyone knows what kind of effort it will take. It's time for all of us to step up.
Sunday started off with practice in the morning. A long run to recover from the race. Man, was it windy! Then after studying and typing Spanish translations the team headed back to the Weisiger-Brown building for a team meeting held by Coach Geiger.
We leave for Terre Haute, Ind., the site of the nationals, on Saturday. Check here on GoPack.com to see how we fare in the biggest race of the season.
John Martinez
