Despite only running in three meets this season, head cross country coach Scott Williamson observes improvement in his Colonel and Lady Colonel cross country teams and hopes they will have their best performances at the Southland Conference Cross Country Championships Monday at Northwestern State.Williamson said he expected his squads to be at the point they are right now.
“They’re really young and they’re developing, but the good thing about young runners is they get older,” Williamson said.
At the SLC Championships, the squads will run at the NSU Demon Hills Recreation Complex, a course Williamson said his team has already run once.
Williamson will count on sophomore Stacey Jones to lead his women’s squad and senior Andre Ory and sophomore Colin Campo to lead the men’s squad.
“We’ll definitely compete hard and see what happens,” Williamson said.
While Williamson does not know if his squads will place higher in this year’s conference meet than last year, he believes individual times will improve.
In last year’s conference meet, the women’s squad finished 10th out of 11 teams. Jones placed 40th in the meet to lead all returning women on the squad.
The men finished the conference meet last in the 11-team field. Ory led the men’s squad with a 54th place finish while Campo finished 58th, sophomore Bobby Politz finished 67th and junior Josh Chauvin recorded a 69th place finish.
Jones said even though there was a lack of team meets this past season and only a few women are currently healthy, she still believes the women will do better than last season.
“They’re doing really well,” Jones said. “I think that everyone’s working really hard.”
Williamson said sophomore Nicole Triche had a stress fracture, and he is unsure if she will be able to run in the conference meet.
He also said sophomore Jodi Dufrene has had some nagging injuries but will run at the conference meet.
Additionally, freshman Brandi Gaudet had problems with her leg and will have surgery.
This past weekend the teams participated in the NSU Invitational in Natchitoches, which Williamson said was an informal pre-conference meet. The original pre-conference meet was cancelled due to Hurricane Rita, but Williamson said many of the conference schools were at the meet this past Friday.
Neither the Colonel nor Lady Colonel squads scored any points at the meet. Campo led the men’s squad with a 25th place finish (21:22.4), while Ory finished the meet in the 30th slot (21:56.3) and sophomore Bobby Politz finished 37th (22:56.3).
On the women’s side, Stacey Jones finished in 20th place (17:07.4), while sophomore Jodi Dufrene finished in 27th place (18:43.9) and freshman Brittany Bernard finished 39th (20:35.1) in the 4k run.
The meet marked the fourth time this season the squads were able to participate in an invitational.
Originally, there were eight meets scheduled this season, but four were cancelled due to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
The squads’ first two meets in New Orleans and Hattiesburg, Miss., respectively were cancelled due to Katrina.
In late September, the LSU Invitational was cancelled due to Rita. In addition, the Lamar Invitational scheduled for Oct. 15 and pre-conference meet in Beaumont, Texas, were also cancelled due to Rita.
Heading into the conference championships, Williamson said missing the three early season meets has held his team back.
“The best type of workout you can do is race,” Williamson said. “We’ve lost some of our sharpness, but I think we’ve done the best we can in training so hopefully we’ll be ready.”
The squads were not able to begin their seasons until Sept. 17, when they attended the Ragin Cajun Invitational in Lafayette. The women finished sixth in the seven-team field while the men placed sixth out of eight participating teams.
Jones led the women with a 13th place finish while Ory led the men with a 22nd place finish.
Following Hurricane Rita the squad was able to participate in the Northwestern State Invitational in Natchitoches on Oct. 3. Jones led the women with a 15th-place finish while Campo led the men with a 25th place finish.
