In collegiate cross country, the season does not end with the conference championship. The WAC Champion Vandal women and fifth-place men are now set for the West Regional Championships today in Seattle, hoping for a chance to run in the NCAA Cross Country Championships later this month.
Idaho junior Hannah Kiser — who made it to nationals last year — and senior Barry Britt are the favored Vandals to qualify for nationals after competing in the regional meet.
Unfortunately, the route won’t be easy as they are competing in the toughest region in the nation.
“Definitely a positive is that once you make it out of the West Region, you know that you are going to be able to do really well at nationals,” Kiser said. “At the same time, it can kind of be a negative (competing in the West) because if you have a bad day, you could very easily not make it.”
The West Region is typically the most challenging of the nine regions. On the men’s side, there are four teams from the region ranked in the top 25 nationally. On the women’s side, there are three west teams in the top five.
To make it to nationals, Kiser and Britt need to finish in the top four out of the runners that are not making it to nationals with their teams. The top two teams will automatically qualify for nationals and most likely a couple of at-large teams as well.
“I feel like a lot of people in the west have to perform probably their best performance of the season at the regional meet in order to make it to nationals,” Kiser said. “And since nationals is only one week later, it can sometimes be hard to compete at the same level just a week later.”
One challenge of running in a race with 300 other runners is finding your place in the pack. There is not much room for error when you need to be near the front in order to qualify for nationals. Britt said it can be very hard to find his place in the pack with so many runners.
“I have a vague idea, but in a field of 300 people you have to kind of rely on your coach a little bit to tell you where you’re at and what’s going on,” he said.
Last year, Kiser qualified for nationals after an 18th place finish in the West Regional Championships. She hopes to make it two in a row after being the first Vandal to qualify for nationals since 2004.
Britt finished No. 30 in last year’s regional meet as the top Vandal finisher. Both runners come into the meet with experience and understand what they need to do.
“I’ve been (to regionals) three times and I’ve run them all differently,” Britt said. “I don’t want to go out too fast, I don’t want to go out too slow, I want to nice and steady and pick it up as I go. So basically it’s more of a pace thing. Also, being on a line with 300 guys, it’s not as nerve-racking because you’ve done it before.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]