UCLA cross country to send runners up West Coast with goal of gaining points
Redshirt senior Colin Burke will enter his fifth season with UCLA cross country, traveling to the Bill Dellinger Invitational in Springfield, Oregon, on Saturday. He earned NCAA All-West-Region honors in 2018 and led the Bruins at the NCAA West Regional with an 11th place finish and a time of 29:49.17. (Don Liebig/UCLA Athletics)
By Vinny Lavalsiti
Sept. 27, 2019 1:05 a.m.
Redshirt seniors Colin Burke and Robert Brandt haven’t run the same cross country course as teammates in two years.
UCLA cross country will be sending the top 10 runners from its No. 24 men’s and No. 27 women’s teams to compete at the Bill Dellinger Invitational in Springfield, Oregon, on Saturday. Meanwhile, a second group of Bruins will travel to the Master’s University XC Invitational in Santa Clarita, California.
Among the 10 men traveling to Oregon are Burke and Brandt, and while the two have competed as UCLA track and field teammates, they have not run together for UCLA cross country since 2017.
“We have a couple groups that we hope (the) guys can finish and compete with each other and be working toward taking other teams down,” Burke said. “It’s been a while since (Brandt and I) have run together on a cross country course. It’ll be fun to see how he stacks up against the other top guys in the NCAA.”
Burke said the men competing in Oregon will be tackling the three-loop, flat race in groups. Burke also said he will be keeping an eye on how Brandt fares in his return to the cross country program after solely competing for track and field last season.
Burke was without Brandt – UCLA’s top finisher in the 2017 Pac-12 Cross Country championships – in his redshirt junior season, which yielded Burke a selection to the 2018 NCAA Cross Country All-West-Region Team. In Brandt’s absence in 2018, Burke placed first for the Bruins at the Pac-12 championships.
The men’s and women’s squads will be facing a combined seven top-15 teams in Springfield. BYU and Portland – two men’s teams who placed second and third at the 2018 NCAA championships, respectively – will be present.
The Bill Dellinger Invitational and its competition give the Bruins an opportunity to rack up points and gain an advantage over other teams when the NCAA Division I Cross Country Subcommittee meets in November.
“To get to nationals, it comes from accumulating points throughout the whole year,” said redshirt senior Jackie Garner. “If we compete (at the same level as) them and make sure we’re only a few points from beating them, those are huge points in our bag because a few of those teams have a for-sure shot at going to nationals.”
Garner – a two-year captain for the women – raced in the 2016 NCAA championships and finished as the Bruins’ sixth runner. The women’s team is ranked for the first time in Garner’s five years at UCLA, and she said there is a target on the team’s back.
“We’ve finally been ranked, and that’s something I’ve never experienced at UCLA,” Garner said. “We have some teams we have to beat, or else they’re going to get points from beating us because we are a ranked team.”
Garner placed as the third and sixth finisher for the Bruins at the 2018 NCAA West Regional and 2018 Pac-12 championships, respectively. Assistant coach Devin Elizondo said Garner has been an anchor in the middle of UCLA’s lineup with both her running and leadership.
“We have a pretty big veteran group and large underclassman group so (Garner is) pulling those divides together as a fifth-year in the program,” Elizondo said. “It’s been exciting seeing her development as a Bruin and in this space as a captain.”
The UCLA men toe the starting line first in their centennial edition uniforms in both Santa Clarita and Springfield, with the blanks firing off at 7 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., respectively.
