2001 Men's Cross Country Preview
7/16/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
July 16, 2001
The 2000 Falcons opened the new decade with a trip to the NCAA championships where they finished 16th in the 31-team field. The 2001 team plans to use that as a springboard to the best decade of Falcon cross country since the 1960's when the Falcons went to the NCAAs five times and had four top 10 NCAA finishes.
"The next step for our program is to qualify for the NCAA championships on a regular basis," said head coach Mark Stanforth when asked what goals he has in mind for the cross country program. "We're coming off a decade in which we established ourselves as one of the top two cross country programs in our conference (three championships and three runners-up) and we want to establish ourselves now as one of the top 20 programs in the country."
The biggest obstacle for the Falcons in their quest for national prominence is the quality of the Mountain Region. For the past eight years the Mountain Region has been one of the top two regions highlighted by the 2000 season when six Mountain Region teams were selected for national competition and all six finished in the top 25. The University of Colorado, with seven top five NCAA finishes in the last eight years, and Northern Arizona University, with six trips to the NCAAs in the last seven years and four top 10 finishes are the teams to beat each year in the region. Throw in Weber State (four top 20 finishes in the last seven years) and BYU with four NCAA trips in eight years, including a second-place finish in 1993, and you understand what Stanforth means when he says, "the toughest part about getting in the top 20 at the NCAA meet is getting out of our region."
The other major goal for the cross country team is to win the Mountain West Conference. The 2001 Falcons will attempt to break BYU's four-year stranglehold on the conference crown.
The Returnees:
The Falcons return six of last year's top 10 performers. The 2000 team featured a close pack with five different team leaders in the seven races the Falcons ran. Four of those five leaders return. C3C (So.) Chris Acs was the team MVP and was the top Falcon finisher in two races. Fellow C3C Ben Payne earned all-conference honors when he led the Falcons at the Mountain West Conference Championships. C1C (Sr.) David Romero finished 18th at the Mountain Region meet to earn all-region honors while fellow first classman Albert Kelly led the Falcons at the NCAA meet with his 85th-place finish. Add 1,500-meter school record holder C1C Brian Carpenter to that group and the Falcons again have the ingredients for a team that will run close together.
C2Cs (Jr.) Jim Blech and Adam Greene were both close to making the top seven a year ago and should challenge for top five positions this fall. Fellow juniors Adam Chitwood and Luke Mostoller, along with C3C Terry Allen, are also capable of moving into the top group.
"Our top five finished less then 45 seconds apart in every race last year and I expect that we will continue that this year. That's what it will take for us to be successful," said Stanforth.
The Newcomers:
Acs and Payne stepped into the top five for the Falcons in 2000 and the recruits in this year's class have the same potential to contribute either in 2001 or later years. Headlining the largest group of middle distances/distance recruits the Falcons have ever had are Danny Soule, Pensacola, Fla., Florida state 2A runner-up in cross country and a 1:51.45 800-meter performer in track, Nathan Franz, Sierra Vista, Ariz., third in the Arizona state cross country meet with a 4:15.0 best in the 1,600, Tom Kubler, Thousand Oaks, Calif., a 9:16 3,200-meter runner who finished in the top two three years in a row in the California Division 5 state cross country meet, and Erik Goff, Bettendorf, Iowa, threetime state 1,600 meter runner-up and a top five finisher in the Iowa state cross country meet his junior and senior years.
"If any of the freshmen contribute this fall, it will be a bonus for us, however, there isn't any question that this is as good a group as we've recruited in my nine years here," said Stanforth in his evaluation of the incoming recruits.
