Cross country prepares for tough Pac-12 conference

With new head coach Patrick Henner at the helm, the women’s cross country team will look to build toward future success in the 2017 season.

The Trojans opened their season on Sept. 1 at the Pepperdine Invitational, placing fourth out of six teams. Junior captain Amber Gore led the team with a 14:48.61 second-place finish. Senior Madison Ricks and junior Lauren Maurer also finished inside the top 20 with times of 15:53.05 and 15:59.84, respectively.

“I’m super excited to start the year on a [personal record], especially on such an unusual course,” Gore said. “It’s 4k, while usually we’ll run 5k or 6k, so it was really a confidence booster going into our first real season meet.”

Henner said the current focus of the team is learning race tactics, rather than hitting a particular time.

“All these early meets, we’re really using those as tools to get better to really learn how to execute and how to run the race,” Henner said. “We’ve just been working on overall general fitness, we’re just going to try to keep seeing how that fitness is going to help us execute better and finish stronger.”

For Saturday’s UC Riverside Invitational, the strategy will be the same as at Pepperdine: run comfortable early and hard late.

“One of the key concepts we’re working on is building intensity,” Henner said. “So, starting relaxed mentally and physically and then trying each k[ilometer] or each mile to build, build, build so that we’re racing really hard at the end.”

As the cross country season extends through November, Henner plans to train through the beginning of the season, allowing the team to peak at late-season meets like the Pac-12 championships.

The conference includes a dominant Oregon women’s program that swept the cross country, indoor track and outdoor track NCAA team titles in the 2016-2017 season. Colorado and Stanford, also Pac-12 teams, took third and fifth in the 2016 NCAA Cross Country Championships.

With a 12th-place finish at the meet in 2016, USC only has space to improve.

“We’re taking a really long-term approach,” Henner said. “We want to of course get a lot better as we progress through the season and get towards the end with the Pac-12 and so forth, but we’re also trying to set ourselves well for track season, indoor and outdoor track season, and even, you know, looking down the road a year from now.”

Having a new coach enter a program can be a transition, but Henner has been pleased with the team’s personality thus far.

“It’s been good,” Henner said. “I think it’s getting better and better too, because they kind of have to adapt to a new coach, a new training system, and I have to adapt to the athletes. So instead of just trying to rush in, I’ve really been trying to learn about the athletes, what they’ve done for training, how do they respond to the training.”

Looking forward, both Henner and Gore believe these team dynamics will help elevate the long-term success of the program.

“I think we have a really good group of girls this year and I’m excited for us all to kind of just mesh and click as one unit and see what we can do on the conference level,” Gore said.

“Definitely, [we’re] one big melting pot. We have all different types of personalities and I think every person brings out a strength in another person and we use each other to make everyone better every day in practice and at meets, too.”

Photo caption: Tyler Kowta | Daily Trojan