Following its meet Saturday, the Northwestern cross country team found itself in an unfamiliar situation. After being satisfied with their performance so far this season, the Wildcats were, for the first time, disappointed with their 28th-place finish in the Iowa State Memorial Cross Country Classic in Ames, Iowa.
The Cats went into the meet expecting to beat ranked teams to improve their chances for an at-large bid to nationals, but walked away without beating a single ranked team.
“(Saturday) wasn’t any indication of how good we actually are,” coach April Ecke said. “We just didn’t have it. This was our first bad race.
“It was important so that makes it disappointing. It’s all going to come down to districts now.”
Rachel Evjen (22 minutes, 28 seconds) once again led the way for NU, placing 83rd. But the sophomore’s performance was subpar considering her season thus far.
“I can’t pinpoint a certain thing that went wrong,” she said. “I just didn’t push or run my best race by any means.”
Rounding out NU’s top five were junior Laura Evans (22:29), freshman Emily Blakeslee (22:37), sophomore Karen Rogers (23:59) and junior Maria Badaracco (24:37). These performances were all substandard for the Cats.
“I don’t think any of us were too pleased,” Evjen said. “I don’t know if we weren’t used to this big kind of meet. I think mentally we broke down, but we do know that we have the capability to run against these bigger teams.”
Evjen and Nicole Kuznia both were nursing head colds, and that may have contributed to the Cats’ demise on Saturday, Ecke said. In addition, the coach said the team is lacking depth in its top seven runners. When Evjen does not have her best race, Ecke wants other runners to pick up the slack. The squad needs to put together a complete race, which Ecke feels they have yet to do.
“What we do in practice is what needs to be done in the race,” Ecke said. “They need to run together. They still haven’t done it in the race. Once they can do that it’ll be scary.”
The Cats walked away from Saturday’s race with a reality check and a new sense of what they must do to be an elite team. Evjen described the team as mentally tougher. But Ecke hopes they can look ahead to the upcoming meets.
“We need to think about how the race went, about what went wrong and forget about it,” Ecke said. “Monday is a new day and we need to be focused on Big Tens. It’s about how bad they want it (now). They have to put together their best race.”
Evjen is looking even further than the Big Ten meet.
“If we dwell on what we did yesterday we won’t go anywhere,” she said. “It wasn’t the determining factor of going to nationals. We still have hope of doing that.”