UCLA cross country looks to defeat USC, Cal Poly Pomona at Rose Bowl
Senior Kelsey Smith has taken over the role of motivator this season as a veteran of the team. Smith said she has been telling the team to perform in races like how they’ve been doing in training, which has started to become longer and more intense.
(Aubrey Yeo/Daily Bruin senior staff)
By Claire Fahy
Oct. 9, 2014 4:35 a.m.
Having a nationally ranked UCLA team compete at the Rose Bowl is common. For that team to be men’s cross country is rare.
Thursday evening, UCLA cross country will host crosstown rival USC and Cal Poly Pomona on the Brookside Golf Course, located on the grounds of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.
It is the first and only home meet for the team this season. It is also the first time in school history that the men’s team will compete as a top-10 team in national rankings, having tied for the No. 9 spot this week, jumping from the No. 21 spot after a second-place finish at the Washington Invitational.
Recently, both the men’s and women’s teams have been performing much better than expected and have experienced more success than in recent seasons. The Bruins are trying to remain unfazed.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do still, but basically just keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing – running together, focusing on not letting the distractions set in,” said junior Sergey Sushchikh.
The UCLA men will face off against USC as well as Bruin alumni in their 8K open event, while the women will take on both USC and Cal Poly Pomona in a dual meet setting.
“Being a senior you just look at it and you’re just like, ‘Ok these are the girls you’re going to race for the entire season’ and so I told that to the rest of the team (before the last race),” said senior Kelsey Smith. “(We need to) just go in there and just race like it’s not anything spectacular – we don’t have to do anything spectacular – we just have to race like we know how and how we’ve been training and we’re going to do great … Hopefully we can keep that up.”
While the Bruins are catching their opponents by surprise, their recent success is no accident. Higher intensity workouts and longer training camps have contributed to their deliberate effort to improve.
“Everyone (is) pretty confident – we’ve been doing visualization before the meets,” said assistant coach Forest Braden. “We’ve been training really well, the workouts have been going really well so it (is) no surprise to us, to the men’s and women’s teams, that we would perform well.”
