The San Diego State cross country team had a setback in Colorado, while competing at the Mountain West Championships last Friday, placing ninth out of 11 teams that competed.
[quote]“In Colorado, we raced in about 45-degree weather at an altitude of 6,800 feet,” sophomore Rachel Roesgen said. “It would be really easy to simply state that our performance was greatly affected by these factors, but in reality we should have been able to deal with these conditions better than we did.”[/quote]
Two nationally ranked teams took the top two places in this meet. As expected, No. 9 University of New Mexico finished with 31 points while No. 20 Boise State University concluded the race with 60 points. The Aztecs had a total of 274.
Sophomore Chelsea Kruthers and Roesgen were the first SDSU runners to finish the race.
Freshman Elaine Ribeiro was the next Aztec to follow, in addition to juniors Dynasty Gammage and Katy Smith who formed the team’s top five runners.
Kruthers was No. 56 overall with a time of 23 minutes, 50.92 seconds. Three runners later came, putting Roesgen as No. 59 out of 86 with a time of 24:02.22. Next came Ribeiro, placing at No. 60 with a time of 24:02.74, this shows that the group ran together as a unit, but things did not work out as planned.
Roesgen, who has been one of the team’s top runners this season, said the biggest lesson the team learned from Friday is that it needs to focus on its performance level at the big-scale meets.
[quote]“We can hit fast times at practice and state our team goals all we want, but when it comes time to compete we need to execute to the level of excellence that we are capable of,” Roesgen said.[/quote]
The Aztecs next meet is at the NCAA West Regional Championship on Nov. 15 in Sacramento in another 6k race, which according to the team is its major race of the year because everything is at stake.
Regardless of the team’s execution in this upcoming meet, overall SDSU worked hard during the season and greatly improved.
[quote] “Physically, we are more than prepared, we know exactly where we are physically and how to approach this next race in the already familiar place of Sacramento,” Roesgen said. “On the other hand. We need to come more prepared mentally and have that passion and drive to absolutely compete to the best of our ability, not just for ourselves as individuals, but for every single one of our teammates beside us.”[/quote]
Photo by Monica Linzmeier, Photo Editor
