The Utah cross country team traveled to Terre Haute, Ind. over Fall Break to compete in the NCAA Pre-Nationals meet. The squad raced in a field of just under 50 teams, finishing in 37th place overall, scoring 909 points. The team winner of the event was Georgetown, which finished with 117 points.
“There are definitely things that we need to work on,” said Utah head coach Kyle Kepler after the race. “In a big race like that, you need to get out. We were on the verge of getting out well, but then backed off. We had so much left at the end of the race, so I give them credit for fighting back. Overall, it was an average day.”
Leading the way for Utah was Rebekah Winterton, who crossed the finish line in 56th place out of more than 330 runners. She turned in a time of 21:05.29.
“Overall, I am pretty satisfied with my race,” Winterton said. “It was a personal record for myself, but there are still a few things I need to tweak. I was passing people like crazy at the end and definitely could have gone out harder.”
With the field being so big, the slightest of margins showed. Susannah Hurst finished second for Utah just 24 seconds behind Winterton, but that ended up being 46 places behind the Utes’ top finisher. Rounding out the top five for Utah were Andrea Chavez, Nikki Rietz and AuraLea Fain, who finished in 207th, 269th and 278th places respectively.
“In a race like this one, having a low-scoring runner is huge,” Kepler said. “Having Amanda [Mergaert] last year really helped us place higher, but there were more teams this year. We still were able to beat three teams that are ranked ahead of us in the regional rankings, so we should be moving up.”
When the rankings were released Monday, Utah had in fact moved from 10th to seventh in the Mountain Region. The Utes now sit in the middle of the 15-team group.
Competing in this big race was not only a different experience for Utah’s new runners — even the veterans had some butterflies toeing up to the line.
“I was pretty nervous for this race,” Winterton said. “We had some girls with great races and some who did not understand how to run this type of race. We haven’t had a start like this all season. It was a good learning experience for our new runners, and it will help them when we get to conference and regionals.”
Once again, the Utes will now have a long break, as they will not compete again until Nov. 2 at the Pac-12 Championships in Boulder, Colo.
While the pre-national meet was a good place to see where Utah stacks up as a team, Kepler and his athletes know they are in for a big challenge at the Pac-12 meet.
“These teams don’t mess around,” Kepler said about the competition the Utes will face at the conference championships. “We are going to have to run fast and make sure we are ready to go right from the start. Ultimately, we need to focus on being ready as soon as the start gun goes off.”