Cross Country Heads To Louisville For Pre-Nationals
Oct 16, 2015 | Cross Country
Coach Peterson's Comments Heading Into The Pre-Nationals
NEW ORLEANS - The Tulane University cross country teams will look to put forth a solid performance in their final completion before the American Athletic Conference Championship as the Green Wave will head to Louisville, Kentucky, to participate in the Pre-Nationals Meet on Saturday at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park.
Both Green Wave teams will run in the Black Race with the men hitting the 8K course at 9:45 a.m. (CDT) and the women taking part in a 6K at 10:30 a.m. The Black Race is one of three tiers going on at the Pre-Nationals as there will be a Red Race of nationally-seeded teams starting at 8:30 a.m. and an Open Race beginning at 11 a.m.
"We are very excited about the opportunity to test the team in this Pre-Nationals invitational," Tulane head coach Eric Peterson said. 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."
The Green Wave are the lone Louisiana program and one of three American teams participating in the Pre-Nationals. On the men's side, Houston will take part in the Red Race while Cincinnati will join Tulane in the Black Race. The UConn women, meanwhile, are part of the Red Race field while Cincinnati and Houston will run in the Black Race.
In their last competition, the Tulane teams had a solid showing at the 42nd Annual Paul Short Run on Oct. 2 in Bethleham, Pennsylvania, where the women finished fourth in the 6K Brown Race while the men finished 17th in the 8K Gold Race. The sophomore tandem of Lauren Bartels and Emma Newton finished in the Top 10 at fifth and eighth, respectively, to highlight the women's efforts and senior Mikayla Sonneborn posted a Top 20 time to finish 19th. Sophomore Moses Aloiloi led the men with a career-best 24:32 to come in 20th overall.
Bartels was one of four Green Wave women to post lifetime-best marks with a 21:33 while Sonneborn clocked a 22:04. Freshman Sarah Marvin followed suit with a 22:48 to finish 85th, as did Jennifer LaMori at 24:22 to come in 244th among the 387 runners participating in the Brown Race.
Aloiloi's performance surpassed his previous lifetime-best of 24:35.34 at the Sundodger Cross Country Invitational back on Sept. 19 in Seattle, Washington. Freshman Emmanuel Rotich was next for the Tulane men with a lifetime-best mark of 24:53 to come in 41st overall while senior Jack White (25:17, 78th), junior Chris Lowery (25:56, 136th) and senior Nicholas Meloro (26:03, 141st) also posted lifetime-best showings.
"The theme for this season is we've been led very well our front runners," Peterson added. "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."
Following the Pre-Nationals, the Green Wave return to action on Saturday, Oct. 31, when Tulane travels to Grimesland, North Carolina, for The American Championship before heading to College Station, Texas, for the NCAA South Central Regional on Nov. 13.
Players Mentioned
