Coach Peterson's Comments Heading Into The Pre-Nationals
Oct 16, 2015 | Cross Country
Overall thoughts on the Pre-Nationals
"We are very excited about the opportunity to test the team in this pre-national invitational. Both our men's and women's teams are placed in the un-seeded race, which I think is very appropriate for where we are as a program at this time. We know it's going to be very competitive, we know it's going to be a very deep field and it's going to be on the course where the national championship will be held this year. We're really looking forward to the opportunity to put our teams in this position and see how they do."
On the format of the Pre-Nationals
"There's a seeded division, which will be the highest ranked teams not only in the national rankings but also in the respective regional rankings. Then there's the un-seeded division, which our teams are placed in, and below that is an open where they'll have incomplete teams or individuals and lower-ranked teams. We're in a good spot and feel like it's going to be a great opportunity for us."
On what he expects to see from his teams on Saturday
"The theme for this season is we've been led very well our front runners. On the women's side, that's Emma Newton, Lauren Bartels and Mikayla Sonneborn. All three of them have been very consistently good, not only every day in practice but also in our meets so far. Moses and Emmanuel do a great job of leading the men. In order for us to have success, we have to at least maintain that level of running from them. Beyond that, what we're looking for is just the development of the depth of our teams. We know that it's going to be challenging with as big of a field that we're going to be running in, but we also know that they're very capable of continuing to improve. We want to use this meet as a springboard to finally get ready for our conference championship, which will be two weeks from now. We'll be seeing some of our conference members in this meet, so that will be a good measuring stick for us two weeks before the championship."
On the Pre-Nationals being the teams' final meet before the American Athletic Conference Championship
"It'll be our final competition before we get into the postseason and we obviously want to see continued improvement. We want to see everyone sharpen up and compete really well."
