Big Sky championships up Saturday for Montana
10/30/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Cross Country
2014 Performance List
The Montana cross country teams will travel to Grand Forks, N.D., this week for the Big Sky Conference championships. The races will be held Saturday at UND's Ray Richards Golf Course.
The men's eight-kilometer race will start at 11:30 a.m. (MT). The women's five-kilometer race will start at 12:45 p.m. (MT).
The races will be the first for the Grizzlies since they had breakout performances two weeks ago at the Inland Empire Challenge at Lewiston, Idaho.
The question at that point was, what would happen to that momentum in the two weeks leading up to the conference championships? Less than 48 hours from the most important race of the season, that question has been answered.
"It's continued," said UM coach Collin Fehr. "The reason I know that is we've had to rein everybody back a little bit, especially the past week. They've just been wanting to go, but we need to save some for the race.
"We've got to have the discipline to hold back so we can have a max effort on Saturday. I think they're ready to have their best performance of the season, and I'm pretty confident they are going to run better than they have all fall."
Racing for the Montana men will be senior Ben Williamson, juniors Mark Messmer and David Norris, sophomores Micah Drew and Adam Wollant and freshman Nathan Wellington.
The Grizzlies are no threat to win the title and probably won't have an individual break the top 15, but Montana could surprise and improve upon its eighth-place pick in the preseason coaches' poll if it has a small time gap between its first- and fifth-place runners.
Montana had four-fifths of that covered at the Inland Empire Challenge. On Saturday either the team's No. 5 or 6 runner will need to come through and join Messmer, Wellington, Wollant and Williamson, who had a 34-second spread at Lewiston.
"We just need a total and complete team effort," said Fehr. "We had four two weeks ago. If we can get all five of them in a tight spread, then we are going to finish a lot better than people think we should.
"We have to be on our A game as far as our racing tactics and competing. The focus has to be to pick people off and realize that every place really does count. This is our peak race, something we've been preparing for the whole season. We can't let any runners go by without challenging them."
The women, who were picked sixth in the preseason poll, will have seniors Keli Dennehy, Heather Fraley and Carly Wilczynski competing, plus sophomore Lauryn Wate and freshmen Emily Cheroske and Christina Seas.
The Grizzlies could and maybe should finish in the top five, and the race will be a chance for Dennehy to come full circle and verify that what she did as a true freshman in 2010 was not happenstance.
Racing on Montana's Big Sky Conference championship team, Dennehy finished fourth overall four years ago at Cheney, Wash. She hasn't been in the top 20 since during a career marked more by injury than podiums.
That's changing this year in what is turning out to be a sweet swan song. Dennehy has led Montana at all three of the Grizzlies' fall races. She finished fifth overall at Montana State, third at UM's home meet and ninth two weeks ago at a race loaded with speedy unattached runners.
"The way this season has played out and the trend she's been on, this weekend is pretty meaningful to Keli," said Fehr. "There have been obstacles and injuries to overcome, but she's always wanted to get back to the point where she can show she's one of the best runners in the conference.
"Now that she's there, she can hardly contain her excitement. She's really determined to prove to herself that it wasn't a fluke four years ago. I have no doubt that she'll be right up near the top."
Montana's top finishers Saturday will travel to Albuquerque, N.M., in two weeks for the NCAA Mountain Region Championships.
Players Mentioned
