Oct. 14, 2005
Once again Betsy McDonald and Dan Tripp led their respective teams with 14th and 29th place finishes at the Bradley Cross Country Classic in Peoria, Ill. This was the final meet of the season before the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Championships in two weeks.
In the overall competition, the women's team took third place with 93 points behind Missouri (23) and conference foe Northern Iowa (72). Western Illinois and Drake rounded out the top five team finishes.
The men's team placed ninth overall with 221 points. Leading the men's competition was Windsor with 30 points. Missouri, Central Michigan, Drake and Illinois-Chicago sealed the top five spots with conference foe Bradley placing sixth and Northern Iowa seventh.
Head cross country coach Chris Bailey, not so pleased with the efforts of the men's team, will use the next two weeks to get his team prepared for the championships.
"The men didn't run well at all," said Bailey. "Practice and competition are two different stories for the men's team.
We've been training hard in practice but in competition they need to be more relaxed and believe in themselves. That's the difference between the men and the women right now. The women's team is more confident and believes in themselves. This is something that we're going to have to work on in the next two weeks to get ready for the conference meet."
Tripp paced the men's team in 26:22.95 for 29th place, while Jeremy Doherty, who has been out most of the season, took 35th place in 26:38.10. Bailey has been hoping from the beginning of the season that Doherty would be ready for the conference championships and he showed just that today.
"Jeremy is slowly getting back to form," said Bailey. "We knew he wouldn't come in and be back to where he was two years ago, but this is where I wanted him at this point in the season, running in the number two spot for us. It's encouraging that he has come back like this nearing the championships."
On the women's side, McDonald's time of 22:23 was good enough for 14th place. Suzy Turner stepped up this weekend turning in the second fastest time for the `Birds in 22:41 for 18th place. Kim Smudde ran right behind Turner in 19th (22:45), followed by Kathleen Thompson in 21st place (23:02).
Bailey had better feelings about how the women competed, but is still looking for them to come together and run well as a team.
"The women's team ran well, but we're still not clicking 100 percent like I would like us to," said Bailey. "We're just going to have to get ready and prepare for conference. We'll go into the meet with fresh legs and confidence and the next two weeks will gives us some time to put us in a position to do that."
The `Birds will rest next weekend as they prepare for the State Farm Missouri Valley Conference Championships in two weeks on October 29 hosted by Evansville.
