Ducks Head To Regionals With Focus On Big Picture: NCAAs
By Rob Moseley
Editor, GoDucks.com
As the No. 2 ranked team in the men’s field, and with the No. 3 women’s team, Oregon’s cross country program is well positioned to compete for the two automatic berths to the NCAA Championships that will be up for grabs Friday in each field of the NCAA West Regional at Stanford.
Capturing those golden tickets, however, won’t necessarily be the Ducks’ goal. There are 13 at-large berths for NCAAs to be claimed nationally among both the men and women. In the big picture, Oregon would be content to get to Terre Haute, Ind., next week by that route, too, saving their legs this week in the process.
“We’re not going to take it lightly,” said UO sophomore Maggie Schmaedick, who helped the Ducks win the women’s title at the Pac-12 Championships. “But at the same time, we can use it to practice certain things, with the knowledge in our minds the big race is a week later and we want to peak for that. It’s an important step in that process, but that’s exactly what it is – it’s a step to our ultimate goal, which is nationals.”
The two UO squads will toe the lines with the rest of the field Friday on the Stanford Golf Course. The 6,000-meter women’s race goes off at 11 a.m., and the gun for the 10k men’s race will fire at noon.
Oregon coach Robert Johnson said the Ducks may rest some runners, and use a more conservative race strategy, in order to maximize their potential for the NCAA races on Nov. 22.
“The way it works at the NCAAs in cross country is, it’s your body of work, kind of like the old BCS (in football),” Johnson said. “Strength of schedule, who you compete with, who you beat – that’s the way you accumulate points. We’ve accumulated quite a bit on both the women’s side and the men’s side. So we’re going to go there, hopefully do as little as possible to advance, and gear it up to go to nationals eight days later.”
Running conservatively hasn’t been the M.O. for UO sophomore Edward Cheserek, who has won his last seven cross country races dating back to last season. Cheserek and Eric Jenkins went 1-3 for the Ducks at the Pac-12 Championships, and now lead the Ducks onto the national stage.
Cheserek figures to be in contention as usual Friday. “I don’t think about it like, oh, I have a lot of pressure; I just do my thing,” Cheserek said. “Whatever the coaches tell me I have to do, I do. Go there and help the team, go there, have fun and run – I don’t even think about, oh, I have pressure.”
Regionals will be one more chance for the UO men to prepare for a showdown at NCAAs with No. 1 Colorado, the only team to beat the Ducks at the Pre-National meet in Tterre Haute on Oct. 18 and again at Pac-12s. “I think we’re really close,” Cheserek said. “We have a couple things to work on, and then during NCAAs, I think we’re going to be ready by that time.”
Friday’s race brings a longer distance for the men, of 10,000 meters, after a season of racing at 8,000. While Cheserek and Jenkins are comfortable at longer distances, elements of the Ducks’ depth are “miler types” on the track, Johnson acknowledged, adding that “I think we’ve put in the extra mileage to cover that.”
The women’s distance will remain 6,000 as usual. That proved more than comfortable for Oregon at the conference meet, where the Ducks captured the title.
The UO women prefer to run as a pack, while the men’s team tends to spread out behind Cheserek and Jenkins. It can be rough for the women to find each other when all the teams are bunched up at the start, but at Pac-12s they regrouped and got their top five runners across the tape within 11 seconds of each other.
“It gets harder in bigger fields, just harder to find each other with so many more bodies in the race,” Schmaedick said. “But I think we’ve done a good job practicing that strategy, trying to get better every week. … Once we find each other, it’s easier to relax and settle into the pace.”
