“We ran great.”
“School record.”
“Breakthrough race!”
What could cause Coach Jonathan Zimmerman to use such phrases when talking about the Cross Country team’s second meet of the season Saturday at UC Riverside?
Perhaps it was that the top seven women improved on their times from the same race last year. Maybe it was the fact that the top five women finished within 34 seconds of each other. It could have been that the top two men, seniors Kyle McNulty and Ryan Richert, finished only 16 seconds apart.
Those are all valid reasons for Coach Zimmerman to be excited.
The women were led by junior Katie Thede and her 17:46 (23 second improvement on her time at the same meet last year). She finished 26th in a field of 217. Sophomore Nychele Fischetti also broke the 18-minute mark, finishing in 17:48 (15 second improvement). She finished 30th. The biggest improvement on the women’s side was junior Danielle Calhoun who ran 19:45 last year. At 18:28, she knocked a full 1:17 off of that and came in 84th. She is finally getting back to full speed after fighting a nagging injury since high school.
“Our overall effort as a team is what really made it a great race on Saturday. All of us 1-7 ran our personal records,” Calhoun said.
The school record was not an individual performance. The Eagle women ran a team time of 90:17 to become the fastest women’s team in school history.
“We hit out goal of running a faster team time than last year at the same course. It was really encouraging to run so strongly as a team,” said junior Sarah Brooks.
The women finished 8th in a field of 27 teams.
That breakthrough race to which Coach Zimmerman was referring involved two of his seniors. Ryan Richert set a personal record at 25:51, and finished 75th out of 343 runners. Not far behind was Kyle McNulty who ran 26:07 and finished 93rd. Also encouraging for the Eagles was seeing freshmen Spencer Lyle finish in 27:42. The freshmen are starting to get the hang of the five-mile race and they will continue to gain experience over the coming weeks before conference begins.
When Coach Zimmerman said “We ran great!” he was talking about the entire team. Both men and women are taking serious strides toward being competitive in their respective conferences. Biola, as of September 16, the women are the second ranked NAIA team in the nation. And the men, led by McNulty and Richert, are improving at an impressive pace.
The Eagles had some very good individual times, but the emphasis has been on the team.
“We all worked together, gave our absolute best and couldn’t have asked for anything better than that!” Calhoun said.
Biola has two more races before GSAC competition. On Oct. 3 the Eagles will be in Salem, Oregon at the Willamette University Invitational. On Oct. 10 they will be right down the street in Costa Mesa at the Vanguard Invitational.
