The last 4 weeks of training and competition have flown by! Our past two competitions have been extremely important for us as well. DeSales’ regional preview and Oberlin’s Inner Regional Rumble place a significant role in telling us as a program how we stack up against the nation’s best. While we didn’t come out of either competition with a win we have seen some incredible performances out of our packs. With two second place finishes from our men’s team and some great front running from our women’s team we can tell that the Gators are ready for NCAC’s.
Fall training in Meadville PA, has been fantastic. Even with the steady amount of rain the Mid-East has been receiving we have been fortunate to have Ernst Bike Trail for some great workouts. Every year I am amazed at our team’s ability to rise to each workouts task and perform at their best. With the academic rigor, late study nights, and pitching contests* college can become a little stressful and I am extremely impressed with how my guys and girls handle it. I love having a team that wants to be better runners and know what it takes to achieve their goals.
Both the Pre-Regional and Rumble were challenging races. DeSales’ course was rough to say the least and a bit warm. Our top men (Vlah, McLaughlin, Over, and Edwards) worked hard to pull some of their teammates early through the first 4k of the race. Once they hit 4k it was nothing but surge. Even though we were just out to preview the course and get a decent workout in some great things happened. Our top 3 guys all somehow worked their way back into the top 15 of the race, With Bobby almost winning the race finishing in 2nd! More importantly, we saw a significant improvement from our 5th to 10th man.
While the Oberlin course has one of the fastest looking set ups we were unfortunate to run on a windy/moist day. The men finished second but I think it was an even more important and successful day for the Lady Gators. Kristina Martin continued with her amazing sophomore campaign and we saw the returning debut of both Kelly Gallagher and Suzanna Kearns. I have all the respect in the world for runners who battle with illness and injury to come back to fight for their teams. I believe those ladies would sacrifice anything for their team.
We are hungry and ready to prove who we are at the conference meet. I hope the other teams are ready for our Gator pack!
*Our favorite German team member, Kevin Edwards, bet he could throw an 80 mph fast ball. So I pulled a few strings with our baseball coach Kelly Swiney to get him under the radar gun. Even with an impressive 74mph fast ball, Kevin failed. The loss of the bet resulted in him wearing his girlfriend’s tights at the next workout, in front of the whole football team…
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| Freshman Andy Sharfman |
*Our favorite German team member, Kevin Edwards, bet he could throw an 80 mph fast ball. So I pulled a few strings with our baseball coach Kelly Swiney to get him under the radar gun. Even with an impressive 74mph fast ball, Kevin failed. The loss of the bet resulted in him wearing his girlfriend’s tights at the next workout, in front of the whole football team…
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| Kevin Edwards & Bobby Over |
