The Oregon women will send only one runner to the national meet Monday in Indiana
Mindi Rice
Freelance Sports Reporter
Senior Carrie Zografos will have to run with a different pack Monday at the NCAA Championships in Terre Haute, Ind.
The Oregon women’s cross country squad did not receive one of 13 at-large bids for the NCAA meet, handed out Monday. However, as one of the top four finishers from a non-qualifying school, Zografos earned an individual spot in the race.
Zografos ran the NCAA course in October at the Pre-Nationals meet, where she finished 53rd.
“I’m looking forward to the course since it’s a comfortable layout,” Zografos said. “It’s easy to focus and lock in on just running and not worry about loops or directions.”
Zografos joins former Duck harriers Stephanie Wessell and Marie Davis as the only Oregon women in coach Tom Heinonen’s tenure to qualify individually, without the team.
“It’s a strange situation for the runner,” Heinonen said. “No one likes to go by themselves, but I’ve had two other athletes make it as individuals, so I have a little experience with it. She’s upbeat and I think she’ll handle the challenge fine.”
Heinonen, coaching his final season of women’s cross country after heading the program for 28 years, has coached 24 NCAA-meet teams. In the four years his teams did not earn a spot, three of them have had individual Ducks represent the women at the national race.
“Both I and the team were really excited about our regional performance Saturday,” Heinonen said. “Our goal was to be really good at the end of the season when it counts the most. By far it was our best race of the season, and the runners were really complimented by a lot of people
afterward.”
UCLA and Washington earned the only at-large bids from the West Region. Washington, which finished just ahead of the Ducks at fourth in the regional meet, received the final spot of the
13 teams.

Polls raise and drop Ducks
In the final national cross country poll of the season, the men’s cross country team dropped from its previous ranking. The men had been ranked fifth in the nation for the past seven weeks, but dropped to sixth after the regional races.
“I’m not worried about ranking. Our original goal coming into the year was to have a single-digit NCAA finish, and that’s very doable,” men’s head coach Martin Smith said.
The women earned a national ranking for the first time this season in the Nov. 4 poll, earning 37th. In Monday’s final poll, the women’s squad moved up to 35th.

Do I know you?
At the NCAA Championship meet, both Zografos and Smith will see familiar faces.
Zografos, who transferred to Oregon from Colorado after two years, will be running against two former teammates.
“It was funny, after my 1,500 (meter personal record) last year, I was talking to one of the Colorado girls and she said that runners never leave CU and get better,” Zografos said. “She wasn’t trying to be mean, but more that she was surprised, but I was still left with a feeling of ‘How do I take that?’”
Smith was the head coach for 15 years at Wisconsin before accepting his position at Oregon. Jerry Schumacher, Wisconsin’s current head coach, was a three-time All-American for Smith between 1988 and 1993. Schumacher stuck around from 1994 until 1996 as an assistant to Smith.