Cross country teams hosting Montana Invitational Saturday
10/2/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Cross Country
The Griz cross country program will host the Montana Invitational Saturday morning at the UM Golf Course in Missoula. The women's five-kilometer race will start at 10:30 a.m., the men's eight-kilometer race at 11:15 a.m.
Men's and women's teams from Montana, Montana State, Eastern Washington and Gonzaga will be competing, plus Carroll and the College of Idaho. The Santa Clara women's team also will be racing.
Montana opened its season two weeks ago at the Montana State Invitational in Bozeman.
The Griz women placed fourth out of five Division I teams at MSU's race. The Grizzlies, who are ranked 15th in the USTFCCCA Mountain Region this week, trailed No. 5 Wyoming, No. 6 Utah and No. 8 Montana State but knocked off Utah State, a team then and currently ranked 11th.
Redshirt senior Keli Dennehy placed fifth, covering the three-mile course in a time of 17:24. She was the only non-Utah and Wyoming runner in the top eight. Sophomore Reagan Colyer finished 15th, senior Heather Fraley 24th.
In the men's race Montana did not place any individuals in the top 20 and finished a distant fourth out of four Division I programs. Redshirt junior Mark Messmer led the Grizzlies with a 22nd-place showing.
"Everyone went into that first race with high expectations of place and outcome, and they didn't quite match those expectations. It was actually good for them to experience that," said UM cross country coach Collin Fehr.
"We're going to be much more realistic going into this race and focus on the internal factors that we can control. We still want to beat every team out there, but we're going to be more focused on performing to the best of our capabilities based on where we're at right now with our training."
The women's team will have a healthy Dennehy on Saturday, but it will be without Colyer, who has a foot injury that may require her to shut down her cross country season with an eye on being ready for the indoor and outdoor track seasons.
Dennehy will be one of the favorites Saturday, as will MSU freshman Caroline Hardin, who joined Dennehy as the only non-Utah and Wyoming runners in the top 10 at Montana State's meet.
Eastern Washington will have Sarah Reiter, who turned her victory at a triangular meet with Portland State and Idaho two weeks ago into Big Sky Conference Athlete of the Week honors.
That it's October and Dennehy is healthy is the best news of the fall. The athlete who finished fourth at the Big Sky championships as a true freshman in 2010 has not been back to that form since.
Last fall she scorched the course while winning the Carroll Early Bird Open. But she spent the rest of the season in limbo between kind of injured and kind of healthy. That resulted in a 38th-place finish at the conference meet.
"Keli is doing a much better job being smart with her training," said Fehr. "Last year she came out at the Carroll meet and blew the doors off, then got hurt and went through this cycle of being hurt and kind of coming out of it, but never completely coming out of it.
"She's doing much better reining herself back. She's getting the main workouts that she needs, then she's cross-training and getting treatment and really staying on top of everything.
"She's going to be running for the top spot Saturday."
The Montana State men had four runners across the line at the MSU Invitational before Messmer crossed first for the Grizzlies, and the Eastern Washington men put together a nice effort at the EWU-PSU-UI triangular in Portland two weeks ago.
And that does not factor in Gonzaga or the College of Idaho, which has a solid cross country program.
What Montana, which is not ranked in the region, will have Saturday will be the home-course edge.
"It's our home course, and there's an advantage to that," said Fehr. "We ran the course Wednesday morning, so they've felt it. They've felt the contours, the hill and the corners, so they'll know it better than any other team there and how to approach it."
Montana, which will be without redshirt junior David Norris on Saturday (illness), was down the standings two weeks ago, but the Grizzlies did have a small spread at the top, at least between their top four.
Messmer finished the five-mile course in a time of 26:28. Freshman Nathan Wellington was 23rd in 26:37, redshirt sophomore Adam Wollant was 27th in 26:49, and senior Ben Williamson was 31st in 26:56.
Montana will race at the Inland Empire Challenge in Lewiston, Idaho, on Saturday, Oct. 18. The Big Sky Conference championships will be held at Grand Forks, N.D., on Saturday, Nov. 1.
Fehr will know in 48 hours if his team is where it needs to be in order to be a factor on UND's Ray Richards Golf Course four weeks from Saturday.
"Today I'd say we're maybe not quite where we'd like to be, but we'll see how Saturday goes," he said.
"Everybody was looking good at our intrasquad meet (in early September), and we've continued to progress, just not at quite the same rate as early in the season."
Players Mentioned
