The Pepperdine cross country season ended Saturday morning at the NCAA West Regional in Palo Alto Calif. leaving the men’s and women’s team room to improve for next season.
The men competed on the 10k course and came in at 24th place with graduate student Cole Feldman leading the Waves at 32:07.
The women finished 22nd and followed sophomore Chelsea Wishard who ran the 6k course with her record time of 21:24.Overall the team was disappointed with where it finished at the tournament.
“[We didn’t do] as well as I was hoping said sophomore Seth Allison, who finished second on the men’s side at 32:55. We did better than we did last year but we didn’t do very well at all last year so that’s not saying very much.”
Head Coach Robert Radnoti said he looks at this experience as a learning tool.
“The West Regional is the toughest region of the nation he said. [It has] both the No. 1 ranked teams of the nation and several are the top 10 of the west. It’s a pretty intense competition.”
Radnoti said the team gained much experience and set school and personal records.
The team hopes to grow stronger from this point on and Radnoti said he has a game plan for improving.
“I think one of the things we need to do is spend a lot of time analyzing [the results] and showing our students what went wrong [and] what didn’t he said. We provide a recommended training schedule for the summer and our best athletes did the recommended training schedule.”
Despite some disappointing results the team gained something that other teams do not have.
“I think on both sides what was really the best was that we did a very good job coming together as a team and really creating that brotherhood and sisterhood…” Radnoti said. “That’s one of the things in our sport that enhances everything.”
According to Radnoti the quality of the individuals helps enhance the team as a whole.
“I think that we laid the foundation for next year’s successes he said. We set a lot of personal records school records and we’re not going to lose a whole heck of a lot of people.”
In the end the cross country team ran their hardest and gave their all. Next season holds high hopes.
“We gained a lot of experience by going to some big meets and traveling and focusing on the WCC and NCAA Radnoti said. We put on another great Pepperdine Invitational with a lot of students almost 2000 to come to see our campus. And from that we’ll probably continue to get a lot of recruits just as we did last year.”
The men and women will now gear up for next semester’s track and field season.