By Michael Sneag
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA men’s and women’s cross country teams will
not be sending full squads to this Friday’s Arizona State
Invitational at Freestone Park in Gilbert, Ariz. Coach Eric
Peterson has decided to only send the women’s “B”
team, consisting of five runners, and is sending the men’s
team without senior standout Bryan Green.
The women’s team will consist of juniors Julia Barbour and
Kelly Grimes, sophomore Tiffany Burgess and freshmen Christine
Atkins and Carolyn Shea.
The team recently attained the No. 18 national ranking after
being out of the top 25 just last week by beating six ranked teams
at last week’s Roy Griak Invitational in St. Paul, Minn.
Green is missing the meet after dealing with a respiratory
infection last week, which caused him to finish out of the top ten
for the first time in almost two years. His time last week, 25:42
was a far cry from the 24:11 he ran when he won the Sundodger
Invitational in Seattle, Wash. the previous week.
“Green is running better than ever,” Peterson said.
“Unfortunately he came down with a respiratory infection. We
were going to keep him out [last week], but we ran him anyway, and
it didn’t work out. It was a wash, and, he could do with the
rest.”
The women’s team has been given the rest to prepare for
the NCAA Preview Meet in South Carolina on Oct. 13th. Overall, the
team is healthy but junior Elaine Canchola has been dealing with
numerous ailments and other team members have been training
vigorously and could also use the rest.
The men’s team consists of mostly freshmen and with Green
out and the loss of sophomore Jon Rankin for the rest of the season
due to a lower leg stress fracture, the team needs as much racing
experience as possible to prepare for the upcoming meets during the
rest of the season.
“We have to look at the reality of the season,”
Peterson said. “The theme of the rest of the season is
development. We have to focus on getting those kids [the freshmen]
comfortable with the idea of factoring into the mix.”
The meet will feature 12 teams, which include the No. 2 Stanford
men’s and women’s teams, the No. 10 men’s team
from Northern Arizona, the No. 4 (tied) women’s team and No.
15 men’s squad from host Arizona State giving the Bruins a
chance to see how they fare against their Pac-10 rivals, even if it
is without some of their top performers.