Teams struggle at conference

The women's cross-country team was cruising along nicely until it hit a speed bump at the conference meet.

After a strong first four meets of the season, the 'Dogs finished in third place out of only seven conference teams.

"What happens in this meet is a large number of people will run above what they've run all year," head coach John Cochrane said. "We did not do that. We ran like we did all year ... . Because we didn't run exceptional, we may have been fortunate to finish third."

Cochrane said he was disappointed with the third-place finish but also said that even if the team had run well, it still only would have finished third because of the great day Central Missouri State University had.

Leading the team as she has done all year, junior Jacquie Faust placed 10th place with a time of 22:37. Cochrane said freshman Danna Kelly's performance was solid as she finished 14th. Junior Meg Robertson finished 19th, sophomore Grace DelNero took 21st, Senior Sarah Armstrong came in 25th, and freshmen Allie Baker and Mandy Puhak finished 31st and 32nd, respectively.

Cochrane said the team made some tactical and mental errors, causing Faust to finish where she did.

"I think the biggest problem at conference was that other runners raced better than they normally did," Faust said. "I raced worse than I have all season."

The team now turns its attention to the South Regional Championship Meet in Abilene, Texas, on Nov. 5. That leaves two weeks for the team to work on the mental mistakes Cochrane said caused his runners not to run up to their potential.

"Over the years if you keep your focus, focus on your training and go into the regional meet mentally prepared, you can do well," Cochrane said. "The world doesn't end at the conference meet. We've had teams do better at regional meet than they did at conference."

Abilene Christian University (Texas) will be at the regional meet, who Cochrane said easily has the top three runners in the region easily. But the gap between their third and fourth runners is a large one. Cochrane said he expects possibly seven of his runners to finish ahead of their fourth runner, so a complete team effort will be important.

Cochrane said he thinks the bottom line for the 'Dogs is they need to beat Pittsburg State, which beat them at conference. He said if they can't even be the second-best team in their conference, then they have no shot at making it to nationals.

Faust said she is positive about the upcoming regional.

"I think Central Missouri has a very strong team this year," Faust said. "But if we pull ourselves together, we can beat Pitt."

Men's cross country head coach Ed Schneider was not happy with his team's fourth-place finish out of six teams in the conference meet either. He said for it to do well, everyone has to run well at the same time, and that just did not happen at this meet. Senior and co-captain Eli Klimek said the reason for the team not performing well as a whole was strategy. "We didn't have a good strategy going into conference," Klimek said. "Other teams have good strategy, and we let that get into our heads and let it get to us."

Klimek was a lone bright spot as he ran into second place in the 8k race, and Schneider said his time of 25:13.7 vaulted him into 10th in the Truman history books for the fastest 8k time in a meet. But Klimek said he thinks there's still more to come this season.

"I don't really feel that I've had an outstanding race this year," he said. "It just hasn't clicked for me yet. But this was my best race so far this year."

Klimek was followed by fellow senior and co-captain Aaron Wells, who took an 11th-place finish. Juniors Erik McFarlane, Dan Wilhite and Steve Porath captured 18th, 21st and 23rd, respectively. Sophomore Bryant England placed 24th and junior Jason Simpson 27th to round out Truman's top-seven runners.

Schneider said he expects more from his older runners and was disappointed with how they ran at conference. Now the team is looking ahead to regionals to prove itself.

"Three teams from the regional go on to nationals," Schneider said. "Abilene Christian is a very strong team ranked No. 2 in the country who everyone expects to be there. Then I think it should be a dogfight for the next two spots, and I hope we're up for the challenge."