Monday, November 3, 1997
Runners just miss the mark, hope for improvement during
regionals
Heat exhaustion overwhelms runners in Pac-10 meet
By Jared Hummel
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA women’s cross-country team had three monumental forces
to overcome in Saturday’s Pac-10 Championship: defending national
champion Stanford, fourth-ranked Oregon and the late afternoon
sun.
They survived the latter.
The 13th-ranked Bruins finished fourth in a highly competitive
region which features four teams from the nation’s top 14. This was
the last meet before the NCAA regionals in Tucson, Arizona – the
race that determines who qualifies for the national championships
and who stays home.
The squad placed behind a surprising Washington team, which put
on one of the best team performances of the year.
"Washington ran very well today; they showed that by far they
had the best team performance (of the day)," head coach Eric
Peterson said. "Washington came in ranked one place behind us and
that’s encouraging to us. We feel that we match up well with these
teams."
Saturday’s finish was respectable but must be improved in the
NCAA regionals if they hope to earn a national championship bid for
the first time in nine years.
"We obviously came here hoping to get third," Peterson said. "We
thought Oregon and Stanford were clear-cut No. 1 and 2 teams in the
region."
Respecting Stanford’s and Oregon’s talents, Peterson employed an
aggressive strategy for his runners.
"I told my team that we needed to be aggressive – we needed to
take a chance and maybe even make the mistake of being overly
aggressive in the beginning of the race," Peterson said. "But it
was a hot day and it left every one of my team members flat in the
last 800 meters of the race."
UCLA’s aggressiveness resulted in the collapse of sophomore
runner Christina Bowen from heat exhaustion. Bowen is ordinarily a
top-four finisher.
Senior Katherina Kechris performed well in leading the Bruins,
placing 11th overall with a time of 17 minutes, 50 seconds. Kechris
has been the leader all season in the absence of injured top runner
Kim Mortensen. Kechris has a legitimate chance of qualifying for
the nationals as an individual if she can repeat her strong
performance in Saturday’s meet in two weeks at the regionals.
Arizona junior Amy Skieresz won the Pac-10 championship for the
third consecutive year, putting herself in the record books as the
only woman to accomplish this task. She bettered freshman Julia
Stamps, who was favored to win the race, by 33 seconds.
True freshman Julie Ott finished 20th; redshirt freshman Kelly
Cohn placed 28th; true freshman Katie Nuanes, 32d; and sophomore
Melinda George crossed the tape at 36th to round out UCLA’s top
five.
For Peterson and the team hungry to end UCLA’s nine-year
championship drought, the focus now shifts to the NCAA regionals in
two weeks. The odds are against them but, as this weekend proved,
anything can happen in a race.