Cross country head coach Scott Slade begins his fourth season at UTSA this fall.
SAN ANTONIO — The UTSA men’s and women’s cross country teams will begin the 2009 campaign at the Trinity Opener, which will be contested at 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday at Olmos Park.
The meet will feature men’s and women’s squads from UTSA and Trinity and the Texas Lutheran women.
The UTSA women return three letterwinners from last year’s team that posted five top-five finishes, including runner-up showings at the Texas State Invitational, Islander Splash and TLU Bulldog Invitational.
Senior Dana Mecke is back after a breakout campaign in 2008. The Smithson Valley High product won six consecutive races, capped by capturing the school’s first Southland Conference crown since 1996 to help the Roadrunners place fifth in the team standings. Mecke was named the league’s Athlete of the Year and Student-Athlete of the Year and garnered SLC Athlete of the Week accolades five times during the season.
The sophomore duo of Kayla Pratt and Courtney Nelson gained valuable experience as true freshmen last year. Pratt, who earned SLC co-Athlete of the Week honors alongside Mecke after the duo won the UTSA Opener, crossed as the Roadrunners’ second runner at six meets, including top-10 finishes at the Texas State Invitational and TLU Bulldog Invitational. Pratt also collected All-America accolades in the 5,000 meters this summer at the U.S. Junior Championships. Nelson was in the UTSA top four in five events, highlighted by a 12th-place effort at the TLU Bulldog Invitational.
A trio of newcomers in senior transfer Pernilla Savestrand, a graduate student from Sweden who competed for South Florida the past three years, and freshmen Ashley Benes and Jessica Bitterly will round out the roster this fall.
The men welcome back nine runners, including seven letterwinners, from a squad that registered six top-six finishes in 2008, including runner-up showings at the Texas State and TLU Bulldog Invitationals.
Sophomore Layne Nixon, a native of The Woodlands, was the top finisher in five meets. He recorded top-10 efforts at the Texas State and TLU Bulldog Invitationals and Ricardo Romo Classic and placed a team-best 16th at the Southland Conference Championships to help the Roadrunners finish sixth.
Senior Corey Vargas and junior Dominick Zucconi are the lone upperclassmen on a young, but experienced squad. Sophomore Brandon Chiuminetta, the squad’s top runner two seasons ago, returns after sitting out last fall with a leg injury, while sophomore Michael Cook crossed as the top Roadrunners at the Walt Disney World Classic and NCAA South Central Regional last year.
Other returnees include sophomores Albert Cardenas, Eric Doll, Ivan Garcia and Cole Reveal, while redshirt freshman Daniel Balbontin and true freshman Jim Stitt will look to contribute in their first season with the program.
2009 Cross Country Q&A with Scott Slade
You’re a few weeks into preseason workouts. How does the team look?
“For the most part, everyone came in fitter than last year, so I’m excited about that. They also came back with great attitudes and they’re all excited about the season. They couldn’t wait to get started with practices and their training. Part of that is a result of what we talked about as a team last year. They weren’t satisfied with their performance last season, so they decided they could either mope or do something about it. It’s clear they set a goal to do get better and they actually began seeing progress toward that goal during the track season. Now as we’re a few weeks into preseason workouts, things have gone very well.”
The women have three letterwinners from last year’s team back, including Southland Conference Champion Dana Mecke. How do they shape up entering the first week of competition?
“The women were low on numbers last year — we competed with five runners the entire season — and we’re still a little low this year with only six. However, all of them have done an awesome job. We’re deeper and stronger throughout the team than we were last year. This is hard to believe, especially after the season she had last year, but Dana looks much stronger. Kayla (Pratt) is much improved from where she was a year ago at this time. The workouts those two have been doing are considerably faster than they were last year. Courtney Nelson has really shown improvement and the two freshmen, Ashley (Benes) and Jessica (Bitterly), are going to turn some heads this year. Pernilla (Savestrand) has the experience of running in the Big East Conference, so she’s really going to contribute greatly this fall. I’m really excited about what this team can accomplish.”
The men bring back a somewhat young but experienced squad from a team that got stronger as the season went on and really contributed during the track season. What should we expect from them this year?
“Last season, it was a little tough to rely on so many freshmen at the Division I level. They gained some valuable experience and learned their lessons, but the thing to remember is that they’re now only sophomores. It can be intimidating for freshmen to go from running a 5k to an 8k and even a 10k. It’s a shock to some of them to compete at those longer distances. Now that they’ve gone through a season and learned how to adapt to the different type of race, I think that experience will help them tremendously. They are doing a great job of making the transition to the longer distances and gelling as a team. We have a couple of individuals who have really stepped up the past two seasons, but that doesn’t matter unless you have five solid guys at every meet. We have some pretty big goals as a team, and we’re not going to reach those goals unless everyone is on board. I think they are. Each guy doesn’t care how he does as an individual outside of him running fast enough to help the team out. They’ve all bought in to the team concept and I think that’s going to help us be successful.”
You have two meets this week — Trinity Opener on Tuesday morning and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Relays on Friday evening. What format do those meets use and how do you approach them?
“It hurts to race. That first time you go through a full race, it is not comfortable or very enjoyable. So, we try to ease them into the season by running these low-key races. The Trinity race is only two miles in length, so it may hurt a little bit but not as much as throwing them into a 5k or 8k right off the bat. The Corpus Christi meet is a bit longer and it will get them used to pushing themselves. Most of what we’re doing right now is base work, conditioning prep instead of race prep, so this first week will introduce them to racing. I want their first race to be a positive experience. So, instead of throwing them into the water without a life preserver, so to speak, we use these meets to get the rust off. The other advantage of going to Corpus Christi is that our conference meet is held there. That will get them familiar with the course and hopefully we’ll have a positive experience there.”
Your first traditional cross country meet is the Texas A&M Invitational on Sept. 12. Talk about that meet and how the rest of the season schedule sets you up for the conference and regional meets.
“Our schedule is starting to look different from when I first came to UTSA. We’re a different program now and we’re not going to shy away from anybody. We want to open at A&M, where a lot of the best teams in the state will race. Two weeks later, we go to Stanford. That will have most of the good teams on the West Coast. In October, we go to the Chile Pepper at Arkansas, which will have some of the best teams from every part of the country. We now have the type of team that can be competitive at these big meets. Our good people need to start racing against the best. A good example is Dana Mecke. She won every race last year until regionals, but she may not win every race this year, as the competition will be much tougher. We feel she needs to compete at that next level before we get to the regional meet, so that she’ll have the experience to help her qualify for nationals. That’s why we set that type of schedule up this year.
“Cross country is unique in that no one really looks at your performance outside of what you did at your conference and regional meets. It doesn’t really matter what you do early in the season. It matters what you do at the end. You can do some things early in the year to work out the kinks and get your team ready for the championship meets.”
No need for any predictions this far out of the conference meet, but what are some of the goals for the team when you reach that point of the season?
“The women were fifth and the men were sixth at conference last year. That was a little disappointing, but what’s done is done. Our goal when we took over the program was to build a program that could compete for a conference title every year. If you’re not shooting for that, then why are you doing this? I’m not predicting that we’re going to win, but we’re going to race to contend for a conference championship. That’s a goal in the back of everyone’s mind. If we fall short, we fall short, but we’re not going out there with the intent to get fourth place.
“Two weeks after the conference meet is the regional meet. That’s some of the toughest competition we’ll see all year, but that’s where the opportunity lies to qualify for nationals. Dana has a great chance to qualify as an individual this year, but our ultimate goal is to qualify a team for the NCAA Championships.”