A slew of hungry Bruins will venture into unknown terrain this weekend, clamoring for victory.
UCLA cross country will compete in the NCAA West Regional on Friday at Haggin Oaks Golf Course in Sacramento, California, with a trip to the NCAA Championship on the line.
In addition to the amplified stakes, the men’s team will run a 10-kilometer race – two kilometers longer than any race the squad has run this season. It will be some members’ first-ever 10K race.
“Mentally, it’ll be a little different,” said redshirt freshman Everett Capelle. “None of us have really run that yet. It’s hard to prepare for something that you’ve never really done before.”
None of the men’s runners competing this weekend ran in last year’s regional meet.
But UCLA believes it has refined its preparation to meet the moment.
“We train for 10K all year,” said assistant coach Andrew Ferris. “We’re not changing our expectations. It’s a progression throughout the season – that’s the next step.”
Ferris said the team has worked all season on simulating the intensity of the 10K, centering its focus on preparing for the mental toll without exerting the physical strain of the event.
Capelle said the Bruins must hone their focus on the game plan to improve from their performance at the Big Ten Championships on Oct. 31, where the men finished ninth and the women finished 12th.
“Something that we struggled on (at Big Tens) was … see(ing) each other in the pack and stick(ing) in that same pack,” Capelle said. “We can take note of that and bring (to) the regionals what it really takes to stick together as a team and work together.”
Capelle also said the men’s team does not know exactly what to expect in its first 10K race but has still set lofty goals for the meet. The Big Ten Championship All-Freshman honoree said he hopes the Bruins can form a coalition of top-30 finishers on Friday.
Ferris is embracing a long-term perspective at this year’s regional meet, prioritizing the development of the team’s young talent on the big stage.
“I’m a realist in the sense that we haven’t got the team on the men’s or women’s side to qualify for NCAAs this year,” Ferris said. “But we definitely have the talent and the youth to qualify in the years to come. And so for me, it’s about ‘Can we put ourselves in a position where we can see that the next step is going to be qualifying for NCAAs?’”
The Bruins will enter new terrain in pursuit of familiar ground – the finish line.
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