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By Michael Sneag
Daily Bruin Contributor
The slate has been wiped clean. Every factor that counted in
getting invitations for the UCLA women’s cross country team
and senior Bryan Green to the NCAA Championships is completely
academic and means nothing. Now they just need to take advantage of
the opportunity.
The women’s team qualified as one of the 13 at-large teams
after finishing fifth at the Western Regional Championships last
week. The Bruins will be joined by 30 of the best teams
from around the nation, and are out to prove that they deserve
their chance.
“On our absolute best day, we are a top-15 team,”
head coach Eric Peterson said. “Unfortunately we
haven’t been able to run like that together on the same day
as a team. If we continue to run like we have in the past few
weeks, we are realistically hoping to be in the top 25.”
This is the third time in four years that the women have made it
to the NCAAs, with the Bruins finishing 28th in 1998 and 30th 1999.
The team is happy to be back again after only sending a
single individual representative to the meet last year.
“It’s a great feeling to be included among the best,
especially after not making it last year,” Peterson said.
“This has been our team goal from the very beginning.
It’s particularly gratifying because not one person on the
team this year was running on the team last year. We are young and
inexperienced, but we are excited to do battle.”
The women’s team will be led by sophomore Valerie Flores,
who was the top Bruin at the Western Regional meet. Junior Elaine
Canchola, the only team member that has experience running at the
NCAAs, will provide much needed leadership. Freshman Alejandra
Barrientos will lead the rest of the team that includes sophomores
Lena Nilsson and Tiffany Burgess and freshmen Carolyn Shea and Lori
Mann.
On the men’s side, senior Bryan Green will be the
Bruins’ lone representative. This is the second consecutive
year that he has qualified as an individual. He is hoping to
improve on his 121st place finish last year, when the meet was held
in Ames, Iowa, in freezing, rainy conditions.
“It made for a tough race, but it was a great learning
experience,” Green said. “Right now I have nothing to
lose, especially after all the frustrations this year. If this race
goes well, everything else that happened will be wiped away, and I
will remember this race as the measurement of the success I had
this season.”
The favorites to win the team titles are, in the men’s
division, No. 1 Colorado, No. 2 Stanford and No. 3 Arkansas and in
the women’s division, No. 1 Stanford, No. 2 BYU and No. 3
Georgetown. Stanford won both the 2001 Pac-10 and NCAA West Region
meets in both the men’s and women’s races.
The event is being held in Greenville, S.C., on the Furman
University Golf Course. The men’s race is 10,000 meters, and
the women’s race is 6,000 meters.