Tuesday, October 21, 1997
Bruins need second-place finish to secure championship berth
WRAP Bruins fall, 46-30, to Oregon in possible
foreshadowing of Pac-10 results
By Jared Hummel
Daily Bruin Contributor
Coming off a sub-par performance at the NCAA preview meet last
week, the UCLA women’s cross country team rebounded with a
second-place finish at the Oregon Invitational on Sunday.
With Stanford all but locking up the top spot in the region,
UCLA must hope to win the No. 2 position in order to secure a bid
to the national championships.
Sunday’s meet in Oregon served two functions: it determined how
well the team matched up against Oregon, the second most
competitive squad in the region, and served as a momentum booster
for the Pac-10 meet.
UCLA head coach Eric Peterson was optimistic about his team’s
performance, as it regained some of the confidence that was lost at
last week’s meet in South Carolina.
"We had, undoubtedly, the worst race of the season back at South
Carolina, and we needed to figure out and sort out the problems we
had back there and get it going again," Peterson said.
To qualify for the NCAA championship meet, a team must either
finish in the top two of its region or receive an "at large" bid.
The NCAA hands out four "at large" bids to teams who have run
competitively against schools from other regions
If Sunday’s race is any indication of how the Pac-10 meet and
the NCAA West Regional will be, the battle between Oregon and UCLA
for the region’s No. 2 spot should go down to the wire.
Host Oregon won the meet with a score of 30 to UCLA’s 46.
Although Peterson was impressed with his team’s resiliency in
bouncing back from both the loss of their top runner, Kim Mortensen
(out for the season with a back injury), and their poor performance
in South Carolina, he made it clear that there was still plenty to
do before qualifying for the nationals can become a reality.
"It’s still not quite enough, because Oregon is still the team
that we need to beat in order to really feel like we really belong
in the NCAA Championships," Peterson said. "The nice thing is that
we’ve got two good chances ahead of us to beat them – or at least
to meet them – in the Pac-10 meet, and the regional meet, and we’ve
got some time to figure it out."
UCLA’s top five finishers placed in the top 30 on Sunday. Senior
Katherina Kechris led the team finishing ninth overall in the best
race of her career – crossing the line at 17:29.
Redshirt freshman Kelly Cohn placed 21st with a time of 18:02
and true freshman Katie Nuanes finished right behind her in 22nd at
18:02. Sophomore Christina Bowen and true freshman Julie Ott
finished at 28th and 30th, respectively, to round out the top five
UCLA runners.