With the end of the season in sight, the Georgetown Cross Country teams will travel to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. today to race in the Mid-Atlantic Regional. As the most significant meet in the 2013 season so far, both teams must place into one of the top two seeds to proceed to the NCAA National Championship next weekend in Terre Haute, Ind.
The women can take a breath of relief at the fact that Providence, the fiercest competition in the Big East, will not be present at Lehigh. Big East foe Villanova will pose the greatest threat. The Georgetown women are prepared for the match up, however, especially with their depth and unity as a team.
“Not only do we have a small spread but we have a deep, small spread, so we can take some risks in our race plan and be aggressive in our placement of runners,” Head Women’s Coach Michael Smith explained.
The Mid-Atlantic meet’s high-scoring nature sets Georgetown up to dominate the field. This particular strength of theirs provides effectiveness in a high-scoring meet rather than at a low-scoring meet, such as the Big East Championship. While only 10 teams competed at the Big East meet, there will be 300 people on the starting line at Lehigh.
Though the pool is larger, Smith is optimistic about Georgetown’s chances.
“Out of 300 Division 1 schools in the nation, Georgetown is ranked fourth,” Smith said. “We’re fortunate enough to be in a position this year where we’ll be able to move through this meet fairly easily.”
As opposed to previous meets, which occur every other weekend, the Mid-Atlantic Regional and the NCAA Championship meets are on back-to-back weekends. Keeping this in mind, Georgetown is hoping to run efficiently in their quest to reach the next weekend of competition.
“As a coach, I’m thinking that one of our biggest strengths right now is that the week before the national meet we don’t have to run to a point where we completely blow out this race. We’re going to do a race plan that allows us to do the bare minimum to go through,” Smith said.
Coming off a disappointing fourth place finish out of nine at the Big East meet, the men’s team has a different strategy in play as they approach the Mid-Atlantic Regional.
“We need to be more relaxed at the beginning portion of the race,” Assistant Men’s Coach Brandon Bonsey explained. “I think our guys have gone out too hard and have been a little too intense at the earlier stages of the race, so then when the real racing starts in the last couple kilometers, their intensity level has been dropping when it should be rising.”
There are about 30 teams competing, providing for a much larger field of runners. Though there will be Division 1 schools from around the country competing, Georgetown’s two main foes are Villanova and Princeton.
“We’ve got to beat one of those two teams if we want to get to NCAAs. We’re just going to keep our eyes open for the white and orange uniforms out there and try and beat as many of those guys as we can,” Bonsey said.
Similar to the women’s team’s particular strengths, the men also have a deep roster. They’ve had a low spread in scoring and utilizing that advantage is easier at a larger meet.
“We’re deep at the difference between our 2nd guy and 7th guy really isn’t that much,” Bonsey detailed. “We’re lining up seven really good guys, and our depth is our biggest asset.”
Leading the Hoyas throughout the season have been graduate student Andrew Springer and senior Bryan King, and their leadership will be just as significant heading to Lehigh.
The meets will begin at 12 p.m. for the men and 1:15 p.m. for the women.