Griz race Saturday at Inland Empire Classic
10/17/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Cross Country
2014 Performance List
The Montana cross country teams will compete Saturday at the Inland Empire Classic at Lewiston, Idaho. The races will be held at the Lewiston Orchards.
The women's five-kilometer race will start at noon (MT), the men's eight-kilometer race at 12:45 p.m. (MT).
The race will be the final opportunity to compete prior to the Big Sky Conference championships, which will be held Saturday, Nov. 1, at Grand Forks, N.D.
"We're kind of training through this one. This is our last main week of training, so taking that into consideration, we don't have super high expectations. But at the same time it's a flat, fast course, so we still expect everyone to run pretty fast," said UM coach Collin Fehr.
"Next week we'll start to trickle down and start focusing on sharpening some things to get ready to peak for conference."
Saturday's meet has drawn an impressive field of teams from the Northwest and beyond: Montana, Lewis-Clark State, Washington State, Idaho, Gonzaga, Eastern Washington, Calgary, Eastern Oregon, College of Idaho, Great Falls and Spokane Falls.
"As far as the competition goes, there are some solid teams there, so the competition is going to be good. But what I like most about this meet is that we're much healthier," said Fehr.
"At our home meet (two weeks ago), we were kind of beat up with sickness and injury. Everybody has looked awesome in practice this week. They've been focused. I like the direction we're headed now more than I did a week and a half ago."
Competing for the men will be senior Ben Williamson, redshirt juniors Mark Messmer and David Norris, redshirt sophomores Cody Curtis and Adam Wollant, sophomore Micah Drew and freshman Nathan Wellington.
The men's team has struggled through its first two races, finishing fourth at the Montana State Invitational, then sixth at its home meet, coming in behind even Carroll and College of Idaho. But Wellington has been excellent in his debut season.
He finished second on the team to Messmer at MSU, then led the team and placed 19th overall two weeks ago at the UM Golf Course.
"He's responding really well to the training, and he's very coachable. We tell him to do something, and he just goes and does it. He takes care of business," said Fehr.
"He doesn't complicate it or over-analyze it, and he doesn't overthink things. I think that's why he's improving so much."
The women's team, which will be without standout sophomore Reagan Colyer for the rest of the fall, has just two Division I victories this season. The Grizzlies knocked off Utah State at Bozeman and Santa Clara two weeks ago at home.
Montana finished well behind both Eastern Washington and Gonzaga at the UM Invitational. Saturday will be a chance for the Grizzlies to face the Eagles and Bulldogs again.
"The big takeaway from our home meet is that we still have a lot of room for improvement, especially mentally," said Fehr, "so we're trying to get better in our practices. If we don't practice it, we can't expect it to happen in races.
"Instead of just showing up and doing the work, we're trying to focus on things we struggle to do in races, like concentrating when it gets hard and focusing on different parts of the race when we need to move. We're focusing a lot more on that in practices to get them ready for racing."
Competing for the women's team Saturday will be redshirt senior Keli Dennehy, seniors Heather Fraley and Carly Wilczynski, redshirt sophomore Lauryn Wate and freshmen Emily Cheroske and Christina Seas.
Dennehy has led Montana at the team's first two races. She finished fifth overall at Bozeman and third at Missoula. Without Colyer in the picture, Fraley and Wate have been rounding out the team's top three.
Players Mentioned
