Cross country teams open season Saturday at Montana State
9/19/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Cross Country
The Montana cross country teams will kick off their 2014 season Saturday morning at the Montana State Invitational in Bozeman. The races will be held at the Bridger Creek Golf Course, with the men's five-mile race starting at 9 a.m., the women's three-mile race at 9:45 a.m.
Both Griz teams will be running as underdogs against the other Division I programs competing. In the men's race, Wyoming is ranked eighth in this week's USTFCCCA Mountain Region poll, Utah State 11th and Montana State 12th. Montana is unranked.
Among the women's teams, Utah, which is only sending its women's team to Bozeman, is ranked third, Montana State eighth, Wyoming ninth and Utah State 11th. The Grizzlies are ranked 14th.
Also competing will be men's and women's teams from Carroll, Gillette, MSU-Billings, Rocky Mountain and Great Falls.
"Unlike last year, we're not going into this race just to go out and see what happens," said co-coach Collin Fehr. "We feel like we can do things as a team now, and the energy that everyone has is indicative of their belief that they can do something Saturday.
"They want to go out there and perform and get results. We want to make a statement, because we feel like we finally can at this point."
The men's team had a 22-second gap between its No. 1 and 5 runners at the Grizzlies' intrasquad race two weeks ago, with freshman Nathan Wellington coming in first, followed by redshirt junior Mark Messmer, redshirt sophomore Adam Wollant, senior Ben Williamson and sophomore Micah Drew.
Montana's tightest 1-to-5 gap in six races last fall was 36 seconds and more often than not it was larger than a minute.
"The men's biggest strength this year is their tight spread," said Fehr. "That's something we're going to try to play to in this race.
"The biggest thing we've been working on with both the men and women is being more disciplined. So the goal for Saturday is to have a disciplined approach to the race. Instead of going out willy-nilly, we want to take a methodological approach to how we're going to attack and when we're going to attack.
"If we can do that, I think we'll do really well in a solid field."
With sophomore Paden Alexander and freshman Dawit Mengistu both redshirting, Montana will get depth from redshirt junior David Norris, redshirt sophomore Cody Curtis and junior Reid Longley.
At the team's intrasquad race, the Griz women did not have the tight 1-to-5 pack the men enjoyed, but they did have smaller groups of runners that worked together. Their 1-to-5 gap was 66 seconds, but Fehr looks for that to shrink Saturday.
"We still have our little subgroups, but they've been getting closer together and becoming a tighter pack," said Fehr.
"Our approach with them is to run the race the right way, so that even if we do end up in subgroups, we'll still be tighter than we've been. If we do that, we should finish higher than we're expected to."
Two weeks ago sophomore Reagan Colyer led Montana, with senior Heather Fraley 11 second back. The top five was filled by senior Carly Wilczynski, freshman Christina Seas and redshirt sophomore Lauryn Wate.
Redshirt senior Keli Dennehy, who missed the intrasquad meet with an injury, is back to full health and will be racing Saturday.
With senior Allie Parks and freshmen Jessica Bailey and Megan Franz all redshirting, that leaves redshirt junior Autumn Taniguchi and freshman Emily Cheroske to provide depth this fall.
The Grizzlies will host the Montana Invitational at the UM Golf Course on Saturday, Oct. 4.
Players Mentioned
