Coast to coast battle in Beantown

[Nevada Hoya]

Tomorrow both the men's and women's XC teams go to Boston for an important meet. The women will be up against the #1 team in the nation in Michigan, while the men will have to contend with Oregon and the Syracuse A team (their B team beat the Hoyas last week). At-large points begin tomorrow, so the Hoyas have a chance of picking up a few points if they can beat a few teams.

www.letsrun.com/news/2014/09/coast-coast-battle-beantown-preview/

[sleepyjackson21]

Women finish 2nd to #1 Michigan. Katrina finishes 4th. Andrea in 11th. Men finish 4th behind Oregon, Syracuse and Providence. Solid results by both.

[Nevada Hoya]

Thanks sleepy. Women had 77 points to Michigan's 55.

Team scores of the women's race: Michigan 55, Georgetown 77, Syracuse 134, Boston College 192, Dartmouth 207, Providence (defending NCAA champ) 211.

I hope the men picked up at-large votes (depending upon whom they beat).

Other women finishers were 18,21,23,26,43 (names unknown right now, at least by me).

[sleepyjackson21]

I haven't seen the men's individual results but for the women its Kelsey Smith 18, Maddie Chambers 21, Autumn Eastman 23, Annemarie Maag 26, Rachel Paul 43 and Hannah Neczypor 46. It doesn't look like Samantha or Haley raced. Haley ran last time out but Samantha hasn't run yet so hopefully she isn't hurt.

Definitely encouraged by the results. I didn't know that Andrea had that type of range and for her to be our #2 the past two races, bodes well. (It was a 5k so i'll temper expectations). Also, very nice to see Autumn race well. Hoya women have a ton of good runners so i wasn't expecting much freshman contribution.

[Nevada Hoya]

Almost complete scoring:

4. Katrina Coogan 17:07
11. Andrea Keklak 17:18
18. Kelsey Smith 17:28 - great race by Kelsey; she has been improving very nicely
21. Maddy Chambers 17:34
23. Autumn Eastman 17:39 - good run by the freshman
26. Annamarie Maag 17:40
43. Rachel Paul 18:00
45. Hannah Neczypor 18:02

Lots of room for improvement, because Haley and Sam were not in the top 45 (I don't know if they ran). They could be our 2nd and 3rd runners this year, if healthy. Also, Bobbie Burgess is a good XC runner, but she might be redshirting.

[Nevada Hoya]

Other Hoyas not in the lists above:

Men
47. Brian King 25:19
63. Mike Lederhouse 25:35
101. Ryan Manahan 26:12

Women
48. Joanna Stevens 18:03
61. Kennedy Weisner 18:10
104. Piper Donaghu 18:32
113. Heather Martin 18:38

So Haley and Sam definitely did not run today. The Hoyas can definitely improve their lot over the season.

[Nevada Hoya]

Katrina's interview on her race yesterday: www.flotrack.org/coverage/251682-Battle-in-Beantown-2014/video/751466-Katrina-Coogan-excited-for-this-Georgetown-team#.VCdOGBYefIU

[Nevada Hoya]

From Coach Henner:

Dear Dr. Betowski,

On Friday afternoon, our men and women raced in the Coast to Coast Battle in Franklin Park in Boston. It was the first time the Hoyas have raced on that historic course since the 2007 BIG EAST Championship meet.

Our women went up against #1 Michigan and kept it pretty darn close despite the fact that we did not race Haley Pierce or Sam Nadel. Both ladies are now training well and should be more than ready to contribute during the championship season. There were several women in the race who will be big factors in the NCAA meet and All-American Katrina Coogan went right with them early in the race. If she continues her aggressive approach, she will end up with a very good season. Middle distance All-American Andrea Keklak ran a very tough race to finish only 11 seconds behind Coogan. Junior Kelsey Smith was our third scorer only 10 seconds behind Keklak and senior Maddie Chambers was our #5. Our top five spread was less than 30 seconds! Freshman Autumn Eastman had another good race to finishing only five seconds behind Maddie. Coach Mike Smith had his Lady Hoyas do a pretty hard workout on the Tuesday before the meet which was run on Friday. We were happy with how they committed to the race even on fatigued legs. As we add in some of our proven runners and rest for the championship portion of the season, we feel we can have dramatic improvements. To only finish 22 points behind the #1 team in the country in such a large invitational speaks well to our potential this fall.

The men showed some very nice improvement over their Penn State race two weeks ago, but still have some work to do to realize their goals for the season. Our young pack was a little too antsy early in the race and faltered a bit when the pace quickened. Within our top five finishers was one senior, John Murray (11th place), and four sophomores. Scott Carpenter recorded the exact same time as John finishing in 12th. Ahmed Bile fell back a bit on the final hill but was only 6 seconds behind Scott and John. Coach Bonsey and I would have been very happy if we would have had two more of our pack between John and Ahmed. We have 5-7 men who are training with them every day and are capable of running with our best runner of the day. We have made very good progress of being more focused on team running, but we still have to do better. With a little better execution and a little more focus on team running, we could have easily finished third instead of fourth. Our whole team is very confident though that we can remedy our execution and focus by the time we race at Pre-NCAA's in three weeks.

[sleepyjackson21]

Nevada, thanks for the post. Good info.