Championship Season Begins With Pac-12s
10/25/18 | Cross Country, @GoDucksMoseley
The men and women of Oregon will race for the Pac-12 Championships on Friday at Stanford, with the Pac-12 Network providing coverage.
It was only a couple of weeks ago that the Oregon cross country teams both secured podium finishes at the Wisconsin Pre-Nationals meet.
When the Ducks return to Madison, Wisc., on Nov. 17 for the NCAA Championships, they'll look to repeat that feat. They've got two chances to demonstrate their championship mettle before that, beginning with Friday's Pac-12 Championships hosted by Stanford.
"This is the time of year we get excited about," UO head coach Robert Johnson said.
The Ducks are setting out on their first championship season under new distance coaches Helen Lehman-Winters and Ben Thomas. The UO women take a No. 4 national ranking into the postseason, while the Men of Oregon are No. 11 in the most recent USTFCCA coaches' poll.
Friday's women's race will cover six kilometers on the Stanford Golf Course, with live coverage from the Pac-12 Network beginning at 11 a.m. The 8k men's race follows at noon.
"This is what we've always been about," Johnson said of the Ducks, who finished second on the women's side and fourth in the men's race at the 2017 conference championship races in Springfield. And despite new faces on the coaching staff and the entry lists Friday, he said, "that philosophy won't change."
The Oregon women are coming off a regular season in which they won the Bill Dellinger Invitational, then took second at Pre-Nationals on the strength of senior Jessica Hull's individual title. The Ducks are keeping one eye focused on the future — the NCAA West Regionals on Nov. 9 in Sacramento, and then the national championships — but a conference crown is on their minds as well.
"As a team we want to be really good in another three-and-a-half weeks, and this is a stepping stone along the way," Hull said Monday. "Last week we banked a lot of good work; we might not see that come out on Friday, but we'll see it in three weeks."
Oregon's entry list Friday includes 2017 all-American Carmela Cardama Beaz. She's the only returning veteran among the Ducks' three all-Americans last fall, but they will field two more in transfers Isabelle Brauer and Weronika Pyzik.
That duo followed their coach, Lehman-Winters, when she joined the UO staff from San Francisco. Hull called Pyzik "the queen of the tempo grind," which Hull — the 2018 NCAA champion in the outdoor 1,500 meters — said has helped her better push through such workouts.
"Lady Ducks have a special way of working together, and buying into the Oregon culture," Hull said. "They've embraced that already."
Blake Haney said the men's team has experienced a similar strengthening of culture in the wake of the coaching change. And like Hull, the transition has helped him address areas for improvement in his training.
"This is the most excited I've seen the group for cross country since I've been here," Haney said. "For us it's just been a lot of positives, and I'm really excited to see how we perform."
Like Hull, Haney is a middle-distance runner on the track. He said Thomas has increased his mileage in training, and Johnson said Thomas has the Men of Oregon running twice per day more often. They've also enhanced their training in ways that go beyond simply logging miles, Johnson said.
All of that is intended to pay off as cross country hits the championship season — particularly at regionals and nationals, when the distance bumps up to 10,000 meters.
"There's a vibe around the team that everyone's bought in, and everyone's willing to really go for it for coach Thomas," Haney said. "We have a lot of team camaraderie we haven't really had in recent years. I think everyone's been thriving off the atmosphere."
The conference races Friday will give the Ducks a chance to reunite with their former coaches, Andy and Maurica Powell, now at Washington, and with a handful of teammates who transferred to UW in the wake of their departure. Hull and Haney said they're looking forward to catching up with all of them — but also to show off the developments they've made under the new staff.
"It's not all-or-nothing at Pac-12s," he said. "But we're looking to get a good result."
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