A year ago, Idaho senior Barry Britt finished second in the 2011 WAC Cross Country Championships. This year, he is the top returner in the conference going into the 2012 WAC Championships Saturday in Ruston, La. However, this isn’t the same WAC and new teams and runners will challenge Britt this weekend.
“He’s really worked hard,” Idaho coach Wayne Phipps said. “He has a couple of track titles and I think he’s really motivated to go out in his senior year and win a championship. I think if he can just run his own race through the first part and find a good rhythm, then he’s usually pretty tough to beat over the last couple (kilometers).”
Britt leads an Idaho team that heads to the championship as an underdog. The Vandals rank No. 4 in the 2012 Pre-Championship Men’s Cross Country Coaches Poll behind Seattle University, New Mexico State and Utah State.
“It’s kind of anyone’s race, I think, on the men’s side,” Phipps said. “I think there’s five schools that all have an equally good chance to win. For us it just means everybody running well on the same day.”
Britt and senior Jeff Osborn are the only returning scorers from Idaho’s third place team last year. Young runners like freshmen Santos Vargas and Will Austin-Cray and sophomores Cayle Turpen and Colton Hastings need to have solid runs for the Vandals.
“The number one thing on our mind is getting the team title,” Britt said. “So everybody is trying to do all the little things leading up right now: stretching, icing, getting to bed, having good food, just be ready to do that on Saturday.”
The Vandals are competing more than 2,000 miles away from home for their conference championship — two-thirds of the distance across the country in what is supposed to be a regional meet. But Idaho is used to travelling for conference competitions. Last year, the Vandal men placed third in the WAC Championships hosted in Hawaii.
“It will be a long trip…but a lot of teams have to do the same thing,” Phipps said. “We’ve got a day to recover — they’ll be fine.”
The flat course and warmer Southern weather should offer prime conditions for a race as the Vandals finish their final preparations before the starting gun signals the most important race of the season.
“It’s a big meet but we have to approach it the same we do every meet,” Britt said. “We don’t have to do anything different in warm up, in races, and then we’ll get the results we need.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]