To paraphrase famed distance runner Steve Prefontaine, whoever has the most guts wins the race. Facing several nationally ranked teams last Saturday at the Adidas Wisconsin Invite, the Hoya men’s cross country team heeded Prefontaine’s words.
Coming off of a tough training week, in which some of the runners ran anywhere between 75 and 80 miles, the Hoyas gave a solid performance, placing second in the team race. The Hoyas beat some notable programs, including fourth-ranked Wisconsin and seventeenth-ranked Arkansas. Unfortunately, the tenth-ranked Hoyas failed to pull out the victory, due to a strong showing by unranked rival Syracuse.
“I knew they were good,” said head coach Patrick Henner. “They are the better team right now. We are going to have to get better if we are going to beat them in a month.”
Despite the loss, the Hoyas kept the margin close, finishing just nineteen points behind the Orange. Graduate student Andrew Bumbalough led the Hoya charge by winning the race, despite having to slow down the last 1,000 meters per Henner’s instructions. Bumbalough dominated most of the race, in which his lead at one point was nearly forty meters.
“We have been training really, really hard. We didn’t really rest up for the race,” Bumbalough said. “I still felt fresh, which was surprising, but very welcome.”
Henner wasn’t at all surprised by Bumbalough’s outstanding showing on Saturday.
“He’s tough and talented and that is the way he runs,” Henner said. “He would have won very easily, but I decided to shut him down.”
Finishing a couple of seconds behind Bumbalough on Saturday, sophomore Mark Dennin also ran strongly, continuing to show that he is ready to make a huge impact for Hoya cross country.
“The fact that I was able to run fast, even with hard training, gives me a lot of confidence,” Dennin said.
This does not bode well for future Hoya opponents as Henner prepares his team to defend their Big East title in three weeks.
“We definitely have the ability to win [the Big East] this year,” Henner said. “The race on Saturday showed us we are on track talent-wise and training-wise. We want all of our guys to race well and be fairly interchangeable. We just got to race well and tough.”
The Hoya men’s cross country team is deep and talented. It’s just a matter of how tough they all are on race day. If everything goes according to plan, the Hoyas will have a Big East performance that would make Steve Prefontaine proud.
