Cross country looks for progress in 2022 season
Cross country will only return one senior — Mihajla Milovanovic — from last year’s West Regional squad. With three new freshman joining the team this year, there could be competition for the seven race-qualifying spots. (Photo courtesy of USC Athletics)
Progress is the name of the game for the women’s cross country team, which is looking to continue its growth trajectory and strengthen its relatively young roster this season.
“[The team] is young and inexperienced; that’s just what we have,” said associate head coach Jebreh Harris. “So we have to take all the positives that we can, keep building culturally, keep improving performance-wise.”
Historically, the Trojans have finished at the bottom of the Pac-12 conference, though a squad of five athletes qualified for the NCAA West Regional last season — putting them in the team scoring competition for the first time since 2014.
Two of those five runners have since graduated, but a core squad of returners remains this season.
Only one senior who ran on the West Regional squad sits on the roster this season: Mihajla Milovanovic. The junior transfer from Loyola University Chicago crossed the finish line second for the Trojans last year at the regional meet — behind the now-graduated Alyssa Brewer — finishing 111th overall with a 6k time of 22:06.
In the 2022 outdoor track season, Milovanovic posted the team’s fastest times in the 3k and 5k (10:20 and 17:55, respectively).
Also returning are sophomores Giovanna Pisano, Gigi Maccagnini and Maya Lacamp.
Pisano finished first for the team at the Pac-12 championship last season (66th overall, 23:09 6k), and Maccagnini — the team’s fastest 1500m runner in 2022 (4:25) — was the first Trojan to cross the line in the first two meets that same season. Lacamp was also a consistent scorer for the squad in the 2021 cross country season.
Harris pointed to Pisano and senior Brooke Rodi as the team’s most vocal leaders.
“[Pisano] is the one who motivates the most,” Harris said. “She’s a great cheerleader for her teammates, so she has been taking a lot of the [brunt] of the emotional energy and motivation of the team.”
Three new freshmen join the squad this year, and could very well mix it up with the returners. Perhaps the most decorated of those three is Ashlee Gallegos of Rancho Mission Viejo, Calif.
Gallegos helped JSerra Catholic win the 2021 California state (Division IV) high school cross country meet, with a 19:49, 67th-overall 5k finish on the famous Woodward Park circuit. A week later, she ran an 18:58 for a 19th overall finish at the NXR California Regional Championships on the same course.
During the 2022 track season, she posted a 2:16.22 for an 11th place finish in the 800m state final. Her personal record is a 2:10.18.
“She is familiar with winning,” Harris said of Gallegos. “She’s one of the top middle distance runners in the state of California coming out of last year, so we are grateful to have her … an athlete who wants to work, who wants to train, who wants to contribute.”
Fellow freshman Lucy Westlake of Naperville, Ill. — who also just so happens to be the youngest American woman to climb Mount Everest — has quite a bit of hardware herself.
In the 2021 cross country season, Westlake finished 9th at the Illinois (3A) state cross country championships with a 3 mile time of 16:55. She then went on to place 41st at the NXR Midwest Regional Championships (19:32 5k) and 39th at the Garmin RunningLane Cross Country Championships (17:22 5k).
“Her cross country team in high school is one of the strongest teams in the state of Illinois,” Harris said. “So she is used to a championship team type of mentality.”
Harris also noted that Westlake’s mountain climbing “toughness” shows itself during workouts.
Also joining the Trojan squad is Liyat Kebbede of Niskayuna, N.Y. Another decorated runner, Harris said that Kebbede suffered injuries in her senior year of high school that kept her from racing much.
But she’s still got plenty to show. In her sophomore year, Kebbede ran a 28th place, 19:30 5k at the New York state cross country championships. She followed that up with a 34th place finish at the NXR Northeast & New York Regional Championships.
On the track, Kebbede holds outdoor personal bests of 10:08 in the 3k and 4:44 in the 5k.
The first meet of the season — the Mark Covert Invitational — is fast approaching on Sept. 3.
“The goal for [Mark Covert], honestly, is one thing I’ve been talking about at practice,” Harris said. “Really getting out that first mile, settling in and also just working together. I just want a good pack.”
Ultimately, the team will aim to peak in late October when the first elimination competition, the Pac-12 championship, begins.
“September is pretty much like … a pre-competitive season of sorts,” Harris said. “You’re building, figuring each other out, working hard, putting a lot of good groundwork in and chemistry building with the other races.”
Earlier this month, the team traveled to Mammoth Lakes for a three-day training camp, which Harris credited for cultivating the team culture. He noted that he thinks the team has built off of last year in cultivating “good energy.”
Moving forward, Harris identified continued progress as a key goal for the team this year.
“We may not have scored so much in the past years in cross country,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s about to be some big, major 180, but progress is progress.”