A week after winning the Hawaii Invitational, San Diego State’sfirst victory in over 13 years, the cross country team traveled toStanford for its most difficult meet of the year. The team felt as ifthis was its best chance to see where they stacked up against topcompetition.
Six of the nation’s top-25 teams, including No. 1 Stanford, No. 2Wisconsin and No. 3 Kansas State, competed. If this meet was the NCAAChampionships, no one would have noticed the difference.
Top-ranked Stanford was victorious, followed by Washington andKansas State. SDSU finished 15th out of 21 teams. Last season’s16th-place finish was acceptable, but this year’s was different.
“I was a little disappointed with our result coming off a win,”said assistant coach Jennifer Nanista. “I was hoping we’d finishcloser to the top-10.”
The results were particularly hard to swallow because the teamfinished behind Southern Utah, a team the Aztecs defeated earlierthis season.
After relinquishing the team’s top spot to junior Kylie Edwardslast week, senior Sophia Hawker reclaimed the No. 1 position on theteam, finishing 36th overall with a time of 18:41.
“I would have liked to have done better,” Hawker said. “It wasreally hot up there and no one did that great. Coming off last weekwe should have done better.”
Edwards, who battled a cold during the week, finished 71st andsophomore Jennifer Stakiw finished 86th.
“When you have this kind of talent you have a choice to win orlose,” said head coach Rahn Sheffield. “I’m not talking aboutvictories, I’m talking about competing or not competing, selling outor not selling out.”
The mental toughness seems to be where the problem lies for theAztecs. Every team had to compete with the 90+ degree heat, the roughcourse and against themselves.
“I think mentally we don’t seem able to withstand the pressuresthat come along with being an athlete,” Sheffield said. “Until we do,we’ll never be close to the top.”
Despite the poor results there were positives. Alicia Stewart,battling a bum knee, finished at 20:00 minutes. Hillery Gemmill,despite falling and turning her ankle during the race, continued tofinish with a time of 20:23.
SDSU has two weeks to prepare for their next meet. This is thetime of year where they have two choices: either run down the roadthat leads to mediocrity, or run down the other that leads towardexcellence. The team has that fork in the road in its sites and it’scoming up fast.
“We’re going to regroup,” Nanista said. “We have four weeks untilconference and six weeks until our district meets. We need to step upthe intensity and that’s what I’m looking for from this pointforward.”
