Women's XC places second at C-USA championship

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

Luck definitely has not been on the side of the women's cross country team this season. Even though team members had been battling knee problems and sickness since Hurricane Ike, the whole team was prepared to go into conference with a healthy squad. Then a week before conference, sophomore Becky Wade - consistently one of Rice's top runners last season and only recently recovered from a cold and knee problems - caught a case of the flu and could not run for five days. And, because the downward sloping terrain at the Conference USA Championship meet in Memphis, Tenn., last weekend, freshman Michaela Reynolds triggered a lingering back injury from early in the race.

Despite all of these issues, Rice still managed to take second place with 50 points, scoring just four more points than the team did when they won the meet in 2005. Southern Methodist University won the meet overall with 40 points while the University of Tulsa placed third with 77 points.

Head coach Jim Bevan said the meet was one of the toughest of the conference so far.

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"There's no question it's the toughest [the] conference [meet] has been," Bevan said. "The team that was second two years ago would have been fourth or fifth. SMU's peformance was even a top 15 [in the country]."

Even though the Owls finished second overall in conference, the team was disappointed about not repeating their conference championship, according to senior Lennie Waite.

"I'd say that we were disappointed," Waite said. "No one walked out with a big smile. It's hard losing after winning in such a convincing fashion last year and not being able to win in again."

On Nov. 15, Rice will run in the South Central Regional Championship in Waco, Texas. The Owls will have to place in the top two to automatically qualify for nationals. If the team places third or fourth, they may qualify at-large for nationals. However, only the top 31 teams in the nation qualify for nationals, whereas 64 qualify in most other NCAA sports.

Regionals will also be as competitive as ever for Rice, since there are four nationally ranked teams in Rice's regional for the first time in history: Rice, SMU, Baylor University and the University of Arkansas.

Additionally, while the conference meet was a 5K, the regional meet and nationals are 6K runs. Bevan believes the extra 1,000 meters will help his team.

"I think the extra K actually helps us," Bevan said. "We ran very well at pre-nationals [a 6K meet]. It's the longer the better, even for Becky Wade."

Overall, Bevan believes his team can put together a complete race at regionals.

"I feel like we can run better than all year," Bevan said. "The little variables haven't all come into place yet. . We're still hoping to put together that race that we get it on all cylinders. So far we've been hitting on seven of eight or six of eight and we haven't hit it on all eight cylinders."

Waite also expects the team to improve on their conference performance at regionals, with the nature of the conference meet part of why the team was unable to repeat their championship.

"The extra K at regionals helps our team," Waite said. "We have a lot of very strong runners on our team and we can come on strong at the end. Conference is a strange meet: there aren't very many schools so not as many people compete. More people are lining up to race at regionals, so we'll feel like we're racing more people and be able to really get into it. We're hopeful about our chances of beating SMU at regionals."

Considering the hiccups during the C-USA meet, Rice's second-place finish was an accomplishment. Junior Nicole Mericle finished third overall and first for the Owls with a time of 17:08, just ahead of senior Lennie Waite's fourth-place 17:18 and sophomore Allison Pye's fifth-place 17:21. The top three Owls qualified for first team All-Conference, and junior Britany Williams, who placed 13th overall, qualified for second team.

Mericle and Waite improved greatly from last season. Last year, Mericle was 52 seconds behind the meet's winner and 40 seconds behind this year's winner, SMU's Silje Fjortoft. This year, she was only 22 seconds behind the leader. Waite was 1:14 behind last year's winner and 1:02 behind Fjortoft; this year, she ran just 36 seconds behind the leader.

Bevan realizes that his runners have worked hard to best the competition.

"Silje's improved, but Nicole and Lennie have improved even more so," Bevan said.

The rest of the Owls ran a strong meet as well, with Williams and freshman Keltie John, who finished 25th overall with a time of 18:25, running closer to the first place runner than they have all season. Wade and freshman Marie Thompson rounded out Rice's top seven, placing 36th and 30th overall, respectively.

This improvement shows that team is getting faster, and hopefully they can continue that trend through regionals in two weeks.

With Reynolds the only runner dealing with an injury, Rice plans to travel to Waco and run a race without any missteps or regrets. Bevan is confident his team can perform well and defend last season's South Central regional championship.

"We hope to run better and redeem ourselves at the Regional meet," he said. "We're hoping the fourth time is the charm against SMU. As defending champions, we want to step up to the plate.

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