Men Open Strong, Women Run Solid

 

Hampton Inn and Suites classic, Hosted by Northwest Nazarene U, Nampa, ID, 9/8/07

 

 

 

Running in Nampa, ID this morning against four other schools (NCAA Div. 1 Boise State, NCAA Div. 2 and host Northwest Nazarene, NAIA school Albertson College and Treasure Valley Community College) the Mountie Cross teams had a mixed day, with quite a few highlights and some areas to improve upon.

 

 

Women:

Running without two of our projected top four (based on a time trial we ran last week), the women got off to a moderate to sluggish start and closed well, but ended up 4th out of 5 teams. EOU held out projected number one Stephanie (Colkitt) Wendle (busy with the beginning of the Masters in Education program) and projected number four Chelsee Harmon (out with a sore knee)…add those two back into the mix and the team results take on a whole different look! Marcella Bosch was our top performer on the day, with a 9th place finish (out of 49 total runners) and opened the first half mile of the 4,000 meter course and closed the last 400 meters extremely well.

 

Sara Bates ran the best all around race of the day for the women, dropping about a minute from last year on the same course. Freshman Christy Pletan ran well, considering she had never even seen a CC race in high school.

             

All in all, it was a rough but promising opening day for the women.

 

WOMEN'S RESULTS

Men:

         

Just prior to the start of the men’s 6,000 meter race, Coach Welch asked his EOU harriers “why are we here today?” While many answered, Morgan Saltenberger replied with a very firm “TO RACE!” and race they did!

             

Running a more complete group than the women, the men came into the meet to see if they could win and while we came up a bit short of that goal, finishing second to Boise state, they competed strong from the 1st through the 8th runner.

             

We were led today by senior and Stanfield high school product, Troy Blackburn, who finished in 2nd place over all in one of the best times EOU has ever had on this course. Troy was followed closely by sophomore and Nampa high school product, Zach Heath in 4th, only a few seconds behind Troy in a performance that is far above what he did in his freshman year (Zach red shirted last season).

             

EOU’s number three man for the day, with perhaps the best over all race, relative to past performances in CC and Track, was none other than the voice at the start, Morgan Saltenberger. The senior from Kenai, AK has stepped up his racing considerably this year and turned in a very fine performance to narrowly miss the top ten with an 11th place finish.

             

Following behind Morgan was a tight pack of our #4 through 8 runners, who all finished within 11 seconds of one another in places 15 through 21….all of them under 20 minutes for the 6K route, where last year only Troy managed to finish under 20 minutes at this meet.

             

Perhaps most significantly, we beat 14th ranked Albertson (EOU is currently ranked 17th).

             

All in all, the men competed very well, while still showing signs of room to improve- a very promising start to the season.

 

 

Next up is the “Bob Firman Invite/ Cascade Conference Preview Meet” at Eagle Island State Park outside of Boise on September 22nd. The second meet will be a stiffer test as there are expected to be 15 teams, including several other NCAA Division 1 teams and several ranked NCAA Division 2 schools (the meet also serves as the NCAA Division 2 West Region Preview meet- Northwest Nazarene will host the NCAA Div. 2 Region meet in early November, while Albertson College will host the Cascade Conference Meet in late October) and more ranked NAIA teams as well.

 

 

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