Bruin cross country keeps pace with top teams
Dylan Knight led the men’s cross country team to a sixth-place finish.
UCLA ATHLETICS
By Manny Redruello
Oct. 4, 2010 1:32 a.m.
If Friday’s results are of any indication, perhaps the UCLA men’s and women’s cross country teams should schedule races on back-to-back weekends more often.
Running on just five days’ rest after competing in the Stanford Invitational last weekend, the Bruins headed to South Bend, Ind. where they finished sixth in the men’s race and 12th in the women’s race at the Notre Dame Invitational.
“It was a quick turnaround from Stanford, so we had a lot of travel. … Going back-to-back weekends is not easy,” coach Forest Braden said.
It may not be easy, but that didn’t stop UCLA from holding its own alongside some of the top teams in the country.
Of the 21 teams that competed in blue division of the men’s race, eight are ranked in the top 30 nationally, while six of the 24 teams in the blue division of the women’s race are ranked in the top 30.
Senior Shannon Murakami, who led the Bruins in the women’s race and finished 18th individually with a time of 17:03, said that competing against top teams throughout the season is important.
“It’s nice because it gives us points to qualify for nationals later,” Murakami said. “Hopefully, we keep performing well and the teams we beat keep performing well in order to get us to nationals.”
Also running for the Bruins were freshmen Sierra Vega (17:23), Melissa Skiba (17:53), Amber Murakami (18:27) and Paisley Pettway (18:52), as well as redshirt senior Kelcie Wiemann (17:44) and sophomore Allie Lopez (19:32).
“We had four freshman running today. Paisley made her debut in the UCLA uniform, did really solid, really good,” Braden said.
“She’s only going to improve from there and get better and better, so that was good to see.”
Like it did last weekend at Stanford, the Bruins’ inexperience came with a price when some of the runners became separated, and spread out during the race.
But the Bruins managed to hang on to finish in 12th place with a score of 338 points.
The men’s team, which finished sixth with a total of 206 points, had to overcome some adversity of its own when freshman Nohe Lema came down with a fever the night before the race.
“I’ve been telling them all year, when someone goes down … you have to be ready to step up,” Braden said. “Last week at Stanford, David McDonald stepped up big, and this week it was Jake Matthews (who) had a huge race, a big comeback from a disappointing Stanford race for him.”
Leading the Bruins for the second consecutive week was redshirt junior Dylan Knight, who crossed the finish line in 14th place with a time of 24:13.
Coming in behind Knight were redshirt senior Jake Matthews (24:36), redshirt junior Kent Morikawa (24:42), junior David McDonald (24:53), freshman Nohe Lema (25:07), freshman Pablo Rosales (25:08) and redshirt freshman Brett Walters (25:43).
And although both the men’s and women’s teams ran well, Shannon Murakami knows that there is still room for improvement.
“We’re working on closing the gap between runners one through five, and I think that we did that pretty well this week,” she said. “And we’re going to continue to close that gap; it’s something we can work on in practice.”
The Bruins will have some time to work on closing that gap before they race again at the Cal Poly Invitational in San Luis Obispo on Oct. 16.
