men's team falters at end of season

Our men’s team had a disappointing end to what promised to be a very successful season. We started the year off on a big note by winning the Southern Miss Invitational. Our times for this opening meet were pretty good and everything seemed to be lined up for a good season.

However, the rains came and caused 2 rain outs – one at Mississippi State and one at Ole Miss. Both meets were made up - the MSU meet was held on an oval 1000m gravel horse track and the Ole Miss turned into a 5000m time trial/dual race with Christian Brothers. We did not run well in either of these meets – I don’t know if it was the change from real cross country venues to more “artificial” surfaces or something else. We just didn’t run well or with much passion in these 2 mid-season meets.

I thought we came back and ran quite well at Jacksonville State. We had several PR’s in that race and we seem poised and ready – in good shape – for the final two meets of the year – the championship meets.

However, once we got to those meets, we once again seemed to lose our intensity and pretty much went through the motions. It’s hard to understand and harder to explain, but the result was that we finished a disappointing 7th in the conference meet and a very disappointing 12th in the NCAA South Region meet. We dropped out of the top 10 rankings in the South Region after rising to as high as 6th earlier in the region.

The guys were pretty disappointed at the end of the season – those last two races left a bitter taste in their mouths and I am hopeful they will bounce back when we start our winter training and return with a renewed passion and vigor for running. We have the talent on hand to be successful and it falls to me as the head coach to put the runners in position to capitalize on that talent. We are going to go back to basics in our winter training – good hard volume and tons of hills in our runs – placing the focus on developing a very high level of aerobic fitness before turning to more specificity in our track workouts.

I am hopeful that the guys’ disappointment from cross country will be a motivator for them in the upcoming track season.