The men’s season likely will come to a close
The New Mexico men’s cross country team’s performance during Friday’s Mountain Regional Championship forced the team to fill the spectator role. The women’s team, however, is headed to Kentucky for the Division I Cross Country Championships.
The women coasted into nationals by placing second at the NCAA Mountain Regional Championships, finishing just one point behind Colorado. The men finished in ninth place for what was likely their last event of the season.
UNM head coach Joe Franklin said he was not upset that the women finished just one point away from winning the event. The group coasted to the finish as a pack, and even waved for some of their competitors to go around them.
A win on Friday would have completed a sweep for the women this season, as they had won every meet up to that point. But that wasn’t the goal: Franklin said the goal was for the team to do what it had to do to make nationals.
“It’s at some level irrelevant,” Franklin said. “The top two automatically go to the NCAA championship. They did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
In the past, Franklin said, teams have laid everything on the line at regionals and did not have enough left to run well at nationals. He said the team wanted to be conservative and save its energy for when things really matter next week. Franklin even gave All-American Alice Wright and All-Mountain West athletes Heleene Tambet and Emily Hosker-Thornhill the day off so they could rest.
The women’s team ran together for the entire six-kilometer race, and crossed the finish line together, placing ninth through 13th: Calli Thackery (21:15.33), Courtney Frerichs (21:15.35), Molly Renfer (21:15.42), Rhona Auckland (21:15.53) and Whitney Thornburg (21:19.68), respectively.
The women running together and placing five consecutive runners was something special, Franklin said. While the Lobos have emphasized pack running all season, the head coach said he couldn’t recall any other time when five women on one team finished consecutively at regionals.
Frerichs, a senior, said the team showed discipline in executing its plan of completing the race as a team and putting it in cruise control to keep everyone’s legs fresh. She said she saw some of the other teams push and make their move, but the Lobos showed discipline by holding back.
“It definitely was the plan,” she said. “We enjoyed the race. We were just soaking it in and enjoying each other’s company and just racing for the team.”
Even after sitting three top runners, and with their focus on staying fresh, the Lobos almost took home the regional crown after tallying 50 points. Air Force’s Hannah Everson was the top finisher (20:45.42), but Colorado was able to place three runners in the top 10 — just enough to edge out New Mexico with a team score of 49.
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Franklin said the men will not make it to nationals. They likely had to finish in the top seven, and they didn’t do enough to earn their way in with the ninth-place finish.
Elmar Engholm, a senior, was the top New Mexico finisher in the 10-kilometer race, in 24th place (30:42.23), followed by teammate Dan Milechman (30:59.25) in 30th. The rest of the Lobo men finished outside of the top 50 and were unable to pick up the points needed to advance.
On the men’s side, UTEP had the top two runners and scored 77, but top-ranked Colorado placed all five of its scorers in the top 20 and took the top spot with 67 points. The top two schools on each side gained entry into the NCAA Division I Cross Country Championships in Louisville, Kentucky on Saturday.
Robert Maler is a reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @robert_maler.
