When nine teams compete at a cross country meet, a eighth-place finish does not sound especially good.
But with the top five teams in the Pacific-10 Conference ranked in the top-25 in the country, the runners on the Oregon women’s cross country team say they aren’t disappointed with their eighth-place showing at Saturday’s Pac-10 Championships.
The Ducks finished with 210 points, a score that bettered only California’s 259. According to plan, top-ranked Stanford (27 points) ran to the championship behind Lauren Fleshman and Sara Bei, who finished first and second individually. Eleventh-ranked Arizona finished second with 64 points and was followed by No. 7 Arizona State, No. 22 UCLA, No. 13 Washington, Washington State and USC.
Going into the race in Scottsdale, Ariz., Oregon was hoping to achieve a sixth-place finish above Washington State, USC and Cal. After practicing in the cold rain of Eugene, the harriers may have been affected by the 90-degree temperatures of the desert.
“We raced pretty much to our potential for the day,” said sophomore Magdalena Sandoval, who finished second for the Ducks.
Junior Carrie Zografos led Oregon and finished 35th overall with a time of 22:58.8 over the 6,000 meter course. Sandoval was two places behind Zografos with a time of 23:06.9 and was followed by Erinn Gulbrandsen (44th, 23:32.6), Annette Mosey (46th, 23:34.2), Laura Harmon (48th, 23:39.7), Sara Schaaf (56th, 25:05.1) and Alicia Snyder-Carlson (60th, 26:20.5).
“Our team is all middle-distance runners, and they didn’t handle the heat or competition very well,” head coach Tom Heinonen said. “They got out reasonably at the start on a day that was getting hotter all the time, but weren’t able to move up, except for Magdalena and Erinn.”
Sophomore Laura Harmon, who has often finished near Zografos and Sandoval this season, still seems to be feeling the effects of a kidney infection she began to suffer the week before pre-nationals on Oct. 13th.
“I think she needs a little more time to get her strength back,” Sandoval said.