Runners Struggle at Conference Meet

By Ryan Mahoney

The Santa Clara men's and women's cross country teams both finished in the bottom half of the field at the West Coast Conference Championships, something that was "very dissapointing" to the team, according to men's runner Kevin Oliver. 

The men, competing without All-WCC runner Ben Demaree, finished only ahead of University of San Diego and Pepperdine University. "We were hoping for a top-four finish," said Oliver. "Not a good effort for us overall." Oliver had the second-best time for the Santa Clara men.

"The training had been going really well, things had been progressing, for the most part, the way we wanted them to," he said. "So we had high expectations going in, and we weren't able to meet them." 

Head Coach Felipe Montoro echoed Oliver's point. "For the men, it was definitely a disappointing finish for us," he said. "We, unfortunately, had some injury and illness issues, but despite that, I was still disappointed with our finish. We'll have to address some of those issues and make sure we're better next year."

Despite the finish, there were some bright spots for the men. Individually, the Broncos were led by Bryan Crook, who finished 32nd overall with a time 25:07 in the 8K race. 

"It was a great performance by Bryan; he ran the best race of his career," said Oliver. 

That career is just getting started at Santa Clara, as Crook is only a redshirt-freshman. 

Other quality times were posted by Kevin Oliver (36th, 25:17), Luca Signore (41st, 25:33), Ezana Tesfu (50th, 26:15), and Moises Venegas  (51st, 26:16). First place went to Brigham Young University's Jared Ward, who finished at 23:42.

The Men's WCC championship was won by the University of Portland. The Pilots have won 33 out of the last 34 WCC Championships, with the sole 2nd place finish coming last season to WCC newcomer BYU, who stayed solid this season and finished second.

BYU and Portland are consistnetly ranked in the top ten out of 300 teams in Division I men's cross country.

"It's definitely a really tough conference; we have our work cut out for us," Montoro said. 

On the women's side, the team was led by freshman Mary Kriege, who finished 25th overall with a time of 21:25 in the 6K race. 

"Mary (Kriege) had a really awesome race. We're super proud of her," said senior Hayley Ney. "We executed our goals pretty well, it's just our conference is really, really good." 

Montoro didn't seem discouraged with the 6th place finish. "Sixth was our preseason ranking, going in," he said. "Our women ran to expectations."

He also added that he thought the gap has been closing between the women's team and the rest of the conference. 

"We're a really young team and we're looking forward to helping them progress and getting back up into the top half of the conference," he said. "I was pleased with the overall effort."

Optimism for next season stems from the fact that the top finisher on both the men and women's side for Santa Clara are freshmen. 

"We're going to have some growing pains, and hopefully learn from them and be better next year," added Montoro.

The Broncos will next race at the Doc Adams Invitational hosted by the University of California, Davis. Then they will select their top runners for NCAA Regionals. 

"(The meet) will help determine our men's squad going forward," said Montoro. "For the women, unless there's some injury or illness, for the most part it will be our top seven from the conference meet." 

The regionals will be held in Seattle on Nov. 9. 

Contact Ryan Mahoney at rmahoney@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.