WC Cross Country travels to Pennsylvania

The Quakers traveled to Pennsylvania on Thursday, September 24th.  The trip to Gettysburg was interesting to say the least-highlighted by the Pennsylvania Turnpike being closed when we got to it and a charter bus that had a faulty oil pressure gauge which made some alarm on the bus go off every time we went up a hill.  There are alot of hills in Pennsylvania!  After touring the countryside of Pennsylvania on Thursday evening we finally arrived at the hotel about 1:30am and the team tried to get some rest.  Friday morning the plan was to have practice(run) in the Gettysburg National Military Park at 10am.  We moved practice back to 11am to get some more sleep, the problem with this plan was that it was not raining at 10am, but it was pouring at 11am.  This run is one of my favorites-we start near the sight of Pickett's Charge and run down by the Pennsylvania monument and head up to Little Round Top-then we head to the Wheatfield-the Peach Orchard and loop back around for about 5 miles.  I decided to run with assistant coach Kyle Wolf back to the hotel from the park.  I had never seen that much water in a downtown area in my life-at times we were running through water that was more than a foot deep!  Sirens began to blare as we returned to the hotel, which I initially thought were Tornado Sirens, but they were for flash floods. The rain eventually subsided with no further problems for the team. The team cleaned up and grabbed a quick lunch before heading over to the Visitors Center at the National Military Park where we got to see the film "Birth of Freedom", the Cyclorama(the biggest painting in the U.S. that depicts Pickett's Charge-its the size of  football field), and toured the museum.  I think the team leaned alot about the Battle of Gettysburg and enjoyed the day!  On Saturday, we made the short drive to Dickinson College for the Long Course/Short Course Invitational which was being held on a new course this year at Big Spring High School in Newville, PA.  I was under the impression that the new course would be easier than the old course, but I was wrong!  The course turned out to be very challenging with a nasty combination of hills and lots of mud, due to the amount of rain that the area had received in previous days.  Both teams stepped up to the challenge in all four of the races that we ran in.  In the combined Men's score we finished 7th and the Women finished 5th against some of the best teams in the Mideast Region.  On the day we had two top 10 finishes with Annie Cekada finishing 9th in the 6k race and  Pat Carroll breaking the 4k school record for cross country with a 10th place finish.  We also receice top 20 finishes from Jenna Parlette(6k), Myles Corcoran(6k), and Tricia Steffan(4k).  On Monday, Pat Carroll was recognized by the Ohio Athletic Conference as the Cross Country Athlete of the week for his performance at Dickinson.  Now the team turns its attention to the All-Ohio Championship this Friday at Cedarville University.  I am very excited to see where both teams fit in the state and the OAC!  Stay tuned!  

Quakers Throw Down at Friendship Invitational!

Last Saturday we had a short trip over to Cedarville University.  I was excited that we could put this meet back on our schedule because they have a great course.  Dickinson moved their meet back a week this year which allowed us to put Cedarville back on the schedule.  Cedarville is a fair test-you know when you leave there if you have run a good time-it is legitimate.  The men showed huge improvement from the Franklin Invitational 2 weeks ago.  Obviously some of the improvement was due to the fact that it was 95 degrees at Franklin 2 weeks ago and Cedarville had near perfect conditions-either way I was real happy with the improvement we made.  The men ran to a fourth place finish.  Our goal going in was a top 3-so we fell a little short. We have a lot of young guys on the team that had never raced five miles until 2 weeks ago-so their second go-around with the distance went much better.  Myles Corcoran and Pat Carroll led us with top ten finishes both running in the mid 26's.  The race of the day came from Sophomore Sam Nieves who had never broken 30 minutes-he ran a huge PR of  28:43-he was an easy selection for Male Athlete of the meet for our team this week.  The women followed at 11am and ran a strong race.  I was definitely excited standing at the mile to see 3 Lady Quakers go through in the lead pack!  The women's field was loaded: Cedarville is an Naia/D2 powerhouse every year, Indian Wesleyan was ranked 10th in the most recent NAIA National Ranking, Otterbein was OAC Runner-up last year, Cumberland College is getting votes in the NAIA poll, Cleveland State is D1, and Wright State is a D1 school.  We had set our goal for a top 3 finish and actually came in 2nd.  Freshman Jenna Parlette was 2nd and ran her first race ever in the 18's and Annie Cekada was right behind in 3rd to lead the Lady Quakers.  There was some nervous anticipation after the race because we weren't sure where we finished, but we knew that we had run well.  Some of the parents thought we may have pulled off the win, but we ultimately ended up 2nd and we were all pleased with that.  The great thing about this group is they were happy with the results but not satisfied.  Our best runs are ahead of us.  We did have 1 dissapointment for the weekend!  After the race we headed to Youngs Jersey Dairy to increase our fatty food and ice cream intake but their was a festival for Wool going on at Youngs so we headed into Xenia to grab lunch.  In 2 weeks we are back at Cedarville and we will give Youngs another try then!  

Quakers off to a good start in 2011!

Well I finally started a blog for the Wilmington College Cross Country and Track and Field Teams.  This has been a project I have wanted to do for awhile and I hope everyone enjoys it.  The 2011 WC Cross Country Team is the biggest in school history-we have 36 athletes on the roster and we brought our biggest recruiting class ever-adding 17 new faces to the program this season.  We have now had 1 meet-The Franklin Sodexo Grizzly Invitational that was held on  September 3rd.  Our team got off to a great start in some tough conditions with the temperature on race day above 90 degrees.  The women won the meet for the 3rd year in a row-setting the meet record with the lowest score ever with only 22points.  Junior Annie Cekada got her 1st Collegiate win in 19:05.  The men took home their first Invite Championship in some time winning the meet with 45 points.  The Quakers were led by the 1-2 punch of Pat Carroll and Myles Corcoran who finished in 3rd and 4th.  I am typing this in my office on the morning of our 2nd meet-the Cedarville Friendship Invitational an I am excited to see what type of improvement we have made after 2 more solid weeks of training-we took last weekend off from racing.  Its a small field at Cedarville with only 10 teams, but it is very competitive with some NAIA, D2, and D1 schools.  I am confident we will race well!