The cross country team concluded one of its most successful
seasons on Nov. 17 when both the men’s and women’s teams excelled at the NCAA
Division II National Championships in
place, five places higher than their 2006 finish, while the men placed 20th,
their best performance since 2003.
For first-year head coach Nate Garcia, the success of his
rookie campaign was a great achievement, but he said he felt that the
achievements were due to his team’s hard work and dedication.
“I came into a real good situation here as head coach of
UCSD,” Garcia said. “There was already a
really good program in place with a good history. My main job was just not to
screw things up. We had a great squad of returning players combined with a new group
of players that brought an awesome level of energy with them. That all really
helped to make my job a whole lot easier.”
Senior Emily McGregor led the Triton women with a time of
21:38.9, good enough for a 31st-place finish. Fellow senior Diane Dunn was
right behind McGregor, finishing in 36th place with a time of 21:47.3 in the
women’s 6K race. There were 189 participants in the women’s race, and UCSD also
saw senior Amanda Burkhardt take 85th, junior Ashleigh Montgomery place 99th
and freshman Jessie Bodenhamer finish 104th.
As a senior, the strong finish was especially important for
Dunn.
“Finishing high at nationals is a nice recognition of all
the hard work that we’ve put in this past year as well as over the last four
years,” Dunn said. “It was a very surreal experience running in my last cross
country race, but I’m really proud of the team that I was running with and
everything that we’ve accomplished. It was great to be at the race with both a
men’s and women’s team. Not very many schools have both genders at the meet so
it really is a testament to our team and our program that we can bring both.”
The Triton men were led by sophomore Jesse Morrill, who ran
the men’s 10K course in a time of 32:52.7 to earn 96th place. The men’s
national championship race hosted 187 runners, and UCSD placed all of its
participants in the top 130. Senior Greg Geldman and juniors Jake LeVieux,
Kevin Klein and Gabe LaMothe rounded out the Triton men’s finishes, all
crossing the finish line in 33:43.3 or less.
Garcia said he was proud the men’s and women’s squads
performed so well at nationals, something that UCSD had not seen happen in
recent years.
“I knew that having both the men and women reach nationals
was something that we were capable of,” Garcia said. “Starting any year you
never really know exactly how things can come together but you always have an
idea of what you would like to see your team accomplish. I would say that we
did meet all of the goals that we set out for and even did better than most
people would have guessed. I’m real proud of all my runners.”
Garcia is already looking down the road toward his second
season, and said he is hoping that his team will be able to build off this
year’s success.
“What we do now is take the experience that we gained at the
National Championships and apply it to next year,” Garcia said. “We are losing
three runners on the women’s side so that means that we have to have the
returning runners step up, and luckily we did have non-seniors at nationals,
too. We’re only losing one runner from the men, so next year we need them to
take the knowledge that they gained from such a high level of competition and
bring it back to the runners that weren’t able to make the trip to nationals
this year.”
