| Scott Slade |
As you enter your second season at UTSA, how excited are you about this season?
“I am very excited. This is a great place to build a program. The guys are back and ready to go. You can see some of the changes taking place already. Their attitudes have been great in workouts. We have 12 guys on the team and eight of them are freshmen, so the future is looking bright around here. It’s just going to take a little time to build it.”
With the track and field team being so successful in the spring, winning an indoor conference championship for the second straight year, does any of that momentum carry over into this cross country season?
“Absolutely. It shows we can build a successful program here. It’s been done in track both indoor and outdoor. The same thing can happen in cross country. It sets the bar high for us and gives us something to aim for. We want to win the triple crown and to do that, obviously you have to be very successful in all three seasons.”
Looking at this year’s team, it’s a very young roster. What do you look for in your two seniors to help prepare the newcomers for a college season?
“When you have freshmen, you never know what to expect. The new guys look at the upperclassmen to see what they’re doing and how they carry themselves, and usually follow their lead. Having Larry Brooks and Eric Miller in our program for a full year is a huge help. They know what to expect and what I expect of them. They are great leaders and have great attitudes. They exemplify the things I am looking for out of everybody on the team.”
How have the first two weeks of preseason workouts been for the team?
“Most of the guys reported in pretty fit shape. The veterans are all much fitter than last year. It’s always an eye-opening experience for the new guys. They come in and find out what college running is all about. Overall, the freshmen are handling the transition very well. How the team’s workouts translate into race performance for our first meet on Friday remains to be seen. There’s a difference in training and race strategy between the high school and collegiate distances, but I feel very confident that all of them will make the adjustment in due time.”
How does this fall’s schedule set up for the team?
“We wanted to keep things low-key early-on because of all the new faces we have. However, if we are going to compete for a conference title and on a national level down the road, we need a schedule that has us competing against the best teams. It helps for recruiting, too, because the top high school kids want to go somewhere that they can run in the big meets. It will be all right if we get up beat up a bit at the big meets this year, hopefully that will inspire the guys to want to compete at the next level.”
You scheduled two big meets in the Stanford Invitational and Arkansas’ Chile Pepper festival. What was the reasoning behind that?
“Stanford is a great meet on a fast course, and they are a top-five team. There will be some other very good West Coast teams there. Arkansas is a perennial powerhouse and the Chile Pepper is the best meet in the country on that weekend. That race is a 10k and is the same course we’ll run for the NCAA Regional, so that will be a great learning experience for the guys. One other thing about going to the Chile Pepper is we’ll run a 10k in our last meet two weeks before conference, so hopefully the 8k at conference won’t seem as tough. I want to start exposing our guys to the better teams around the country and those two meets certainly do that.”
Looking around at the other teams in the Southland Conference, how do you see the conference meet stacking up?
“Lamar is loaded. They won last year and bring everyone back. SFA finished second last year, but they did lose some key runners. They’re a solid program so I expect to see them competing again. UTA and A&M-Corpus Christi did not lose anyone and they tied for fourth last year, so you have to believe they will be in the mix. We were seventh last year and we lost our top three runners, but I still think we can do better than seventh. Others may not have the same expectations for our team as I do. Finishing in the top five would be a great building block for the future."