Sept. 2, 2009
NORMAL, Ill. -
2009 Cross Country Notes 
The Illinois State men's and women's cross country teams will open their 2009 seasons at the Illini Challenge Friday in Champaign, Ill., at the Illinois Arboretum. The women will compete in the 4K race, which is set to begin at 5 p.m., and will be followed by the men's 6K race at 5:30 p.m.
It will be the fourth year in a row that the Redbirds have opened their season at the Illini Challenge.
Head cross country coach Jeff Bovee is using the first meet of the season as an assessment tool to see where ISU is at in its training and how it will compete against other teams.
"This meet is a chance for us to race together and work on some key racing aspects of our training," said Bovee.
The Redbirds will run against Illinois, Robert Morris, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, Danville Area Community College (DACC) and various collegiate club teams.
Running for the women's team will be senior Kim Ebbesen, juniors Michelle Brunk, Jess Husted, Gina Kapusta and Kirsten Lang and freshmen Samantha Bluske, Kathleen Hogan and Brea Tinney.
Competing on the men's side will be sophomores Rich Eber, Nick Geyer and Kevin Grady and freshmen Kevin Forde, Patrick Morgan, Gerardo Perez, Steven Regan, David Schumacher, Mat Smoody and Bryan Winek.
The Redbirds competed at the 2008 Illini Challenge, where the men's team took second place behind in-state rival and meet host Illinois. The men were led by senior Rob Barkulis, who finished in eighth place with a 19:10.09.
"We are sitting out a lot of our runners to focus on training, but we are sending over a quality team," said Bovee. "We have depth on both teams and they both are competitive. We may come away with a win even though we are focusing on team packing, trying to hit race splits and learning how to race together. If you look at the guy's we are sending, we are going to have a young team. The success of our season on the men's side will be dictated by how the younger guys do and who steps up to fill holes that we may have."
On the women's side, ISU took first place at the 2008 Illini Challenge. Four Redbird women finished the meet in the top-10 individually. Husted took second at the meet with a 14:47.96. Lang took sixth in the meet, while Sarah Glowacki came in eighth place. Brunk crossed the finish line in 15:02.07 for 10th place.
"On the women's side, we do have a large portion of our varsity that will be racing," said Bovee. "We also have some freshmen that will be racing for the first time, and our goal is to blend our returners and our freshmen together and to learn to race with a new group. We will use this meet to see where we are at and the chips will fall where they fall. We aren't as focused on the other teams as much as we are focused on our team's efforts. Our race splits and team packing is what we will be focusing on."
GoRedbirds.com: Your online source for Illinois State Athletics, tickets, TRC gifts, multimedia, Redbird merchandise, photos and more.
