North Carolina State University Athletics
NC State
adidas Cross Country Challenge
Cozzarelli, Dame Ace adidas Cross Country Challenge
9/16/2011 12:00:00 AM | Cross Country
Sept. 16, 2011
CARY, N.C. — Andie Cozzarelli and Greg Dame each won the individual races, and NC State’s men’s and women’s cross country teams both rolled to easy victories Friday in the adidas Cross Country Challenge at the Wake Med Soccer and Cross Country Park.
Cozzarelli, running unattached, won the women’s race by nearly four seconds over East Carolina’s Brittany Copeland. Cozzarelli ran the 5k course in 17:12.0. Copeland was second at 17:15.7. After that, it was all NC State, which won the women’s race with a team score of 23. East Carolina was second at 35. Longwood was a distant third with 121 points. The NC State Track Club was fourth with 124, and Virginia Wesleyan rounded out the top five with 132 points.
Also finishing in the top 10 for NC State were true freshman Joanna Thompson (3rd, 17:19.6), Erini Mercer (4th, 17:32.9 and running unattached), Tiayonna Blackmon (5th, 17:40.0), Kenyetta Iyevbele (7th, 17:43.2) and Erika Alpeter (10th, 17:45.5).
Defending ACC champion Laura Hoer, who won this event a year ago by a whopping 29 seconds, was held out for precautionary reasons because of an ouchy hamstring.
“We ran well up front especially,” women’s head coach Laurie Henes said. “Andie was unattached, but she ran at a really nice pace start to finish. Joanna is going to be really good as a freshman. Those two ran very strong races. Erin, Tiayonna and Erika ran well. I’d still like us to close up the gap from one through five.”
Henes said Cozzarelli, Hoer and Mercer all would be in uniform next Saturday for the Roy Griak Invitational at the University of Minnesota.
“Laura could have lined up today, but we decided to play it safe,” Henes said. “Next week is an important race and we’ll have a full squad with her, Andie and Erin in uniform.”
While the women won their race easily, the men could have split their squad in half and finished first and second. The first 12 runners across the finish line all were from NC State, with a group of eight runners bunched up within two seconds of one another at the front of the herd.
Dame officially was the winner of the 5k race at 14:57.9, followed by Bryan Spreitzer at 14:58.1, Bobby Moldovan (14:58.7), Adam Henken (14:59.3), Brian Himelright (14:59.5), Ryan Hill (14:59.6 and running unattached), Greg Campbell (14:59.7), Matt Sonnenfeldt (14:59.8 and running unattached), Michael Mansy (15:07.4), Lewis McPherson (15:18.6), John Sharpe (15:20.7) and Graham Crawford (15:21.1 and running unattached).
“Our goal for this race was to have as many athletes as we could to run together as a group at the front of the pack,” men’s head coach Rollie Geiger said. “Obviously, we did that well. We also had a lot of young kids run well, and that was good. We know the older guys are good. It was nice to see them show improvement.”
The Wolfpack won with a perfect score of 15. ECU was second with 82 points. Virginia Wesleyan (110), Winston-Salem State (134) and Guilford (140) rounded out the top five.
The Wolfpack will run again in eight days at the Roy Griak Invitational at the University of Minnesota. Because of the closeness of the two races, the adidas Cross Country Challenge was essentially part of the training cycle for Minnesota.
“That’s a much bigger race, and an 8k race for the men,” Geiger said. “We normally train on a two-week cycle, so we used this race as part of our training cycle for next week.”
