Three top-seven finishers at Saturday’s Western Regional Championships helped propel the Oregon men’s cross country squad into the Nov. 25 NCAA Championship meet.
Senior Jason Hartmann finished second individually, running the 10,000-meter race in 30 minutes and 18 seconds. Hartmann’s second-place finish helped Oregon take second as a team, automatically qualifying the squad for the national meet.
Shortly behind Hartmann, who finished third in last year’s regional meet, were redshirt sophomore Ryan Andrus (sixth, 30:37) and junior Brett Holts (seventh, 30:41). Both Andrus and Holts improved on last year’s regional finishes, moving up from 27th and 31st, respectively.
Breaking the top-20 for the first time in their careers, and finishing out the scoring for Oregon, were redshirt sophomore Eric Logsdon and redshirt junior John Lucas. Logsdon improved on last year’s 42nd-place finish by placing 12th, while Lucas, who finished 55th last year, came in 16th.
Hartmann’s second-place finish matches his second-place finish as a sophomore, while he finished third individually last year in the regional meet.
In his four years coaching at Oregon, men’s head coach Martin Smith has had three teams earn a spot at the national meet. In 1999, the Oregon squad finished sixth nationally, after being ranked 12th in the week prior to the championship meet.
In 2001, the men finished third in the region, and earned a national berth. Ranked 14th nationally, the team finished 13th in national meet, with six of seven runners returning for this season.
Smith coached two national championship teams in his 15-year career as head coach at Wisconsin.
On the women’s side, redshirt senior Carrie Zografos finished sixth individually, earning an automatic berth at the NCAA Championship meet.
The women finished fifth as a team, behind the same teams they finished fifth to at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships on Nov. 2. The squad may earn a spot at the national meet when the at-large teams are announced today.
“Today may get us to nationals, it may not, but they certainly showed they can run well when it counts, with virtually the same team that was 12th here last year,” said women’s head coach Tom Heinonen.
Zografos had her best regional finish, running the 6,000-meter course in 21:26.
“Mentally, I wasn’t nervous, because other than my hip I had felt good and comfortable coming in, and Pac-10s gave me confidence,” Zografos said. “I know if I looked at today as potentially the last race of my career, that would put more pressure on me.”
Zografos had a hip muscle strain that flared up in practice Tuesday, and was unsure how it would affect her performance.
Three other women harriers joined Zografos in the top-30. Junior Laura Harmon placed 24th, running the race in 22:15 and improving on last year’s 45th-place finish. Redshirt junior Eri Macdonald finished 26th overall.
Freshman Nicole Feest finished sixth for the Ducks and 67th overall in her first regional championship meet.
“We only lost to Washington by nine points, and this was the best race we could have looked for at the end of the season,” Heinonen said.
The women’s squad finds out today if they earned one of 13 at-large berths for the NCAA Championship meet on Nov. 25. The men have one week to train before traveling to Terre Haute, Ind., to take on 30 teams and 248 runners in the national field.
Mindi Rice is a freelance writer for the Emerald.