After finishing eighth at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships and struggling with
injuries and disappointing times all year, the women’s cross country team is not expecting to come home from Tucson, Ariz., with a win at the NCAA Western Regional Championships.
Oregon will face No. 1 Stanford, No. 8
Arizona, No. 11 Arizona State, No. 17 UCLA and No. 24 Washington, in addition to other regional schools. The top two schools and top four individual finishers from non-qualifying teams automatically receive an invitation to the NCAA Championships, so there still is an outside chance for the Oregon harriers.
Another 13 teams and two individuals will also be selected by a committee to go to Furman, S.C., for the nationals, but it is unlikely that head coach Tom Heinonen’s squad will be granted an at-large bid.
Leading the way for Oregon, as she has done throughout the season, will likely be junior Carrie Zografos. Through last weekend, Zografos had been running well in practice, but Sunday night she became ill and missed Tuesday’s workout, Heinonen said. It is unclear whether she will still be feeling the effects on Saturday.
Heinonen said that sophomore Magdalena Sandoval is feeling the effects of a quad strain, but Laura Harmon appears to have
recovered fully from a kidney infection that has been affecting her for almost a month.
Freshman Sara Schaaf will not travel with the team to Tucson because of pain in her upper leg, which is suspected to be a femur stress fracture.
With Schaaf not entering the race, the women are left with only six members of the team entering the race: Erinn Gulbrandsen,
Annette Mosey, Alicia Snyder-Carlson, Harmon, Sandoval and Zografos.
Despite the superior competition and roadblocks from injuries, Heinonen and the team is still looking ahead with a positive frame of mind.
“The goal we talked about this week is for each individual to run better than Pac-10s and finish the season on a more positive note,” he said.
Chris Cabot is a sports reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached
at [email protected].