At the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) Championship in Monmouth, OR, the women’s cross country team won their first ever NCAA conference title.
“It’s awesome, it’s a great feeling to [know] you made history,” said runner Rebecca Bassett.
“I’m really excited because it’s our first conference championship [. . .] since we’ve been in the NCAA, so hopefully it’s the start of bigger things in the future,” head coach Brit Townsend told The Peak.
Bassett led the pack with a time of 20:38.08, which netted her second place individually, while teammate Jennifer Johnson followed closely behind, placing fifth.
“I went out as hard as I could, I was going into my race hoping to make top three all conference, so I was looking for a higher positioning and hoping some other girls would come with me,” said Bassett.
The times of only five SFU runners counted toward the team’s total score, however, Townsend emphasized the effort of the whole team: “Our girls came through, all seven of them mattered [. . .] it was really important that all of them rose to the occasion.”
The five whose scores did count finished within the top 20, with Miryam Bassett placing 17th, Kansas Mackenzie 18th, and Peggy Noel 20th.
The team as a whole finished with a time of 1:45:59.43 and 62 points, only one point ahead of second place, and two ahead of third — needless to say, it was a close finish.
“We were pretty unsure [if we were going to place first], they kept saying it was ‘very close’, ‘too close to tell,’ ‘we’re going to review the results’ and we ended up on top,” said coach Townsend.
The men put up a great performance as well, placing third in their tournament behind University of Alaska-Anchorage and Western Washington University; Oliver Jorgensen led the charge, coming in sixth.
The teams scorers all placed in the top 30 out of 82 runners, with Marc-Antoine Rouleau placing 13th, Cameron Proceviat 16th, Austin Trapp 25th, and Travis Vugteveen 30th. SFU also had four more runners place in the top 50, a point of emphasis for the coach.
“[We need to] have our fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh runners go as close as they can to the lead runners, because if we can make that gap between our first runner and our fifth runner really small we’re going to have a better chance at performing well in three weeks.”
Townsend’s focus has already shifted from the teams’ performances at the conference championship to regionals, where both teams must place in the top 16 in order to move on to the national championship.
“I have to look ahead because the regional meet is how we qualify for the national championship,” the coach explained. “That is the most important meetup in the season.”
The women’s team qualified last year for the first time, but the men have not yet made the cut. Townsend is confident that this year could be the year: “I think we have a chance, a really good chance of making [the national championship] on the men’s side.”
The west regionals will be held Saturday, November 22 in Billings, MT. Should either team qualify for nationals, they will compete for the championship in Louisville, KY on Saturday, December 6.
