Women's cross country headed to nationals after second place regional finish

By Natalie Clericuzio     11/20/08 6:00pm

Running cross-country is a lot like playing poker: Doing well requires practice and skill, but they both require a little bit of luck. Last Saturday at the NCAA South-Central Regional meet, all of these elements came together for the women's cross-country team perhaps for the first time all season. Not only did the team compete in peak shape, but they also ran without anyone on the team battling illness or injury.

"We've never been 100 percent healthy [until] now," head coach Jim Bevan said. "Health is always an underlying factor. You've got to deal with that one little element of being a human being. There are mortal obstacles we all have to go through. Some of it was we're lucky, and we're healthy now, but some of it was by design. You want to be your best at the end of the year."

Junior Nicole Mericle, however, ran so well that she probably did not need any luck. Mericle won the race, marking the first time any Rice runner has ever won a regional meet. Additionally, Mericle ran the fastest 6K race in Rice women's cross-country history with a time of 20:34. With eighth and ninth place finishes from sophomore Allison Pye and senior Lennie Waite, and 17th and 27th place finishes from sophomores Britany Williams and Becky Wade to boot, Rice took second place overall in the meet. The Owls automatically qualified for national competition behind the University of Arkansas, the Southeastern Conference champions.

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Bevan said he was very pleased with team's performance.

"We had the best performance of the year, which I was anticipating," Bevan said. "I really felt good going into the race that we were going to have our best race."

However, Rice was tied with Baylor University purely on scores and finishes. The tiebreaker, which requires comparing each runner head-to-head on each team (i.e. the top runner from Rice's time with the top runner from Baylor's time, and so on), came out in Rice's favor, aided greatly by Rice's fourth-place runner, Williams, who finished nine seconds ahead of Baylor's fifth-place runner.

The national meet will be held in Terre Haute, Ind., on Monday, Nov. 24. The race will be broadcast on CSTV at 11:08 a.m. Currently, the University of Washington is the favorite to win, as they are ranked first nationally and have been for the majority of the season. Other schools that will be contending for the title include Princeton University, University of Oregon, Florida State University and Texas Tech University.

Last season, Rice placed 16th overall at nationals. Bevan believes this year's squad is even better and can improve on that result.

"The region is much better than they were a year ago, he said. "This just bears out what I've been saying all along that I believe we have a better team than we did last year but our competition is much better than it was last year. We're going into the national meet with some momentum now, and I think our girls are optimistic. They all ran there last year, and ... they're big meet performers who are reallylooking forward to running at the national meet again."

Additionally, Rice moved up to 19th in this week's national rankings.

The regional meet was also the first time this season that Rice defeated Conference USA foe Southern Methodist University, which finished fourth after winning the C-USA championship two weeks ago.

Beating SMU should be a boost to the team, Mericle said.

"It's been a long time coming," Mericle said. "We've had some disappointing races, some injuries on the team and things that have that just haven't really gone our way. Being able to put things together at Regionals was definitely nice and definitely a good prelude to Nationals."

Mericle's win, however, did not come easily. A strong wind blew throughout the race, creating difficult running conditions. According to Bevan, Mericle spent the early part of the race among the lead pack of 12-15 runners. After that group went down a hill relatively early on, one runner from Texas A&M University and another from Baylor broke open the competition.

Mericle worked to keep up with these runners, steadily advancing throughout the race. At 3K, Mericle was roughly 40 meters back of the leaders. By the 5K mark, Mericle had moved up 20 meters. The final 300 meters of the course is a straightaway up a hill. At the base of the incline, Mericle was still roughly 10 meters back. During the uphill straightaway, she took off and pulled ahead of the leaders, winning the race by seven seconds.

Bevan noticed that the runners she passed even felt her go by she was running so quickly.

"I knew at 4K when I saw [Mericle], she had a chance to win the race and sure enough, she did," he said. "Her time was impressive, but more than that, it was impressive that she did it on a windy day in less than ideal conditions."

Mericle bested several strong runners on her way to the front of the pack. She outran several All-Americans, including Baylor's Erin Bedell, Texas A&M's Christina Muñoz and Baylor's Nichole Jones, as well as Arkansas' Catherine White, this year's SEC individual champion.

"That was kind of surprising," Mericle said. "I wasn't aware that all that was going on during the race ... I knew it was a big thing that I won, but I didn't know it was a good time. It was surprising because it was a really windy day so it wasn't ideal conditions or anything. It's exciting."

Bevan credited Mericle's as well as the team's success to the effort they have put in for the whole season and the previous summer.

"I can't say enough about these young ladies and their diligence over their last four or five months," he said. "This is a reflection of their summer and a reflection of taking care of the other 22 hours of the day away from the track.

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