In what was the final cross country meet before a mighty few get selected to go run at Regional’s it was only fitting that the final meet of the year had arguably the toughest course.
The West Coast Conference Championships at Crystal Springs in Belmont Calif.: 22 turns and four menacing hills—an intimidating terrain for teams more accustomed to flat consistent races. Before the race senior Mary Stutzman said “There’s a lot of optimism for the women’s team in Belmont this weekend. Lolo [Lauren Lodge] and Chelsea [Wishard] are going to go out and try to place in the top ten—which historically has been very tough to do at the WCC Championships.”
Top ten? How about top five.
In a race of the 55 best runners in the West Coast Conference it was Pepperdine’s Wishard senior and Lodge junior that showed off their experience placing second and fifth overall respectively. Behind Wishard and Lodge were six other Waves honored to compete: juniors Paige Mobley Emily Branch Hannah DeWalt and Aneasha Lawrence and sophomore Adie Davies. The women stayed in a pack for the majority of the meet a strategy they had going into the race. Although 54 women ran and raced well it seemed from the start no one was going to catch up to Loyola Marymount’s junior Tara Erdmann who posted a finishing time of 20:21 average 5:28 a mile and finishing 26 seconds over second place finisher Lauren Lodge.
“Tara got out to a good lead leaving our girls to battle back in the pack with another runner from LMU and one from San Francisco Radnoti said in an interview with Pepperdine Sports. I felt that Chelsea’s and Lauren’s times were amazing considering the difficulty of the course. But they finished right where I thought they would and both ran outstanding races.”
Wishard’s second place finish trumped her sophomore and junior year performances when she took bronze twice on the same course. According to Pepperdine Sports Wishard is also the only woman Wave in Pepperdine history to earn All-WCC honors (top eight) for three consecutive years.
The women’s team placed sixth overall in the race capping what was a strong season for them. With the help of Radnoti and the addition of Assistant Coach Iryna Vashchuk over the summer the Pepperdine women’s cross country team thrived exceeding perhaps even their own expectations.
Both the men and women’s team remain idle until Nov. 13 when selected runners will go and compete at the NCAA West Regional in Eugene Ore.