Most freshmen don’t score in their team’s first varsity meet of the season. Most freshmen don’t even place in their team’s first varsity meet of the season. True freshman Nicole Feest placed and scored in the first meet of her collegiate career for the Oregon cross country team.
Feest, who graduated from Glenbard East High School last spring, helped her high school squad finish fifth in the 2001 2A state cross country meet by finishing fourth individually. During her senior year, she also earned conference, sectional and regional accolades.
“She’s a tough runner,” head coach Tom Heinonen said. “She kept her wits about her and she raced well.”
With only one meet under her belt, Feest has plenty more chances to race well as a Duck. And considering she finished fifth in the Oregon squad, there are many mentors for her to learn from.

Practice makes progress
Redshirt senior Carrie Zografos, last year’s team MVP and most improved, along with junior Magdalena Sandoval and junior Laura Harmon, all improved their race times at the Roy Griak Invitational. Between last year’s Roy Griak Invitational and this year’s meet, all three women improved their time by 30 seconds to a minute.
These same three runners trained both by running in the track season and extra training they gave themselves over the summer.

Scoring? There’s a score?
In cross country, the object of the contest is to have the lowest team score. The lowest team score then wins. Each team enters seven runners into the race. The places of the top five finishers for each team are added together and that is the team score. A perfect score would be 15 (1+2+3+4+5).
Scores also vary by the number of teams and runners in the meet; the larger the meet, the larger the scores tend to be. In championships and regular-season meets, runners who compete as individuals do not add to a team score.
When team scores are added up, these runners are not counted in the final standings, and individual places are changed to fill the spots the independent runners held.