GNAC Cross Country Championship Preview - Crusaders ready to compete on Saturday
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Defending champions Jessica Pixler of Seattle Pacific and Marko Cheseto of Alaska Anchorage are among 15 returning all-conference athletes who are scheduled to compete in the ninth annual Great Northwest Athletic Conference cross country championship meet Saturday (Oct. 24) at the Apple Ridge Run Cross Country Facility in Yakima, Wash.
Pixler, who is the two-time defending national champion, will be seeking an unprecedented fourth straight GNAC women’s individual title. Ashley Vincent of Western Washington (2001-02) is the only other conference athlete to win as many as two conference cross country titles.
Cheseto, meanwhile, will attempt to become the first male athlete to win a second conference individual title as eight different men from seven different schools have previously finished first in the conference championships.
Pixler and Cheseto will also be hoping to lead their teams to conference titles for the second year in a row. A year ago Alaska Anchorage placed four runners in the top six on the way to a 19-point team win over second-place Western Washington to win its third men’s title in the past seven years.
Seattle Pacific edged Alaska Anchorage by four points to win its fourth consecutive women’s team title and its fifth in the eight-year history of the conference.
Both defending champions, however, go in as slight underdogs, at least based on the latest USTFCCAA NCAA Division II West Regional rankings.
Western Washington is ranked second and UAA is ranked fourth in the West Region. Also ranked in the Top 10 are Western Oregon (5th) and Northwest Nazarene (7th). In the national rankings, WWU is seventh and UAA is 21st.
Alaska Anchorage is ranked second, Seattle Pacific is ranked third and Western Washington is ranked fourth in the latest women’s regional rankings. They are fifth, seventh and eighth, respectively, in the national rankings.
Pixler has had another great season, finishing third in the University of Washington Sundodger, second at the Stanford University Invitational and first at the San Francisco State Invitational and will be the overwhelming favorite to repeat and join UAA’s Stacy Edwards (2001-03) and Mandy Kaempf (2003-06) as the only women to have Top 10 finishes and earn all-conference honors in four different seasons.
UAA’s Laura Carr, who placed fourth in last year’s meet also has an opportunity to accomplish that feat. She was 10th in 2005 and eighth in 2006 before redshirting in 2007.
Pixler and Carr are among seven returnees from last year’s all-conference team. A year ago, Pixler covered the Apple Ridge layout in a time of 21:12.00, finishing 39 seconds ahead of second-place Sarah Porter of Western Washington.
Porter, who has wins this fall at the CWU Apple Ridge Invitational and at the WWU Invitational and is seeking her third straight Top 10 finish, is also back from last year’s Top 10 along with Jane Larson (3rd) and Natty Plunkett (7th) of Seattle Pacific, Hallidie Wilt (8th) and Ruth Keino (10th) of Alaska Anchorage and Jaclyn Puga (9th) of Northwest Nazarene. Porter and Larson placed 13th and 15th at the national meet to join Pixler as All-Americans.
Keino has a win this fall in the UAA Invitational and a pair of seconds at the UW Sundodger Open and at San Francisco State.
Seattle Pacific will go to the line with five former all-conference performers as 2007 all-stars Suzie Strickler (4th) and Kate Harline (10th) will also be in the lineup.
Two other GNAC women who have posted individual wins will also be in the field. Theresia Schnurr of Alaska Fairbanks has three victories (two of them in dual meets with CWU in Fairbanks and one in the BYU-Hawaii Invitational) and Amanda Wright of Western Oregon finished first at the Willamette Grass Course Invitational.
On the men’s side, Cheseto, who earned All-American honors with a ninth place finish at last year’s national meet, earned his first victory of the season last Friday at San Francisco State, which will be the site of the NCAA West Regional.
A year ago he led a 1-2-3 UAA finish in the conference meet. Alfred Kangogo was the third-place finisher and he also returns for the Seawolves. Also making a run for the individual title will be UAA freshman Micah Chelimo, who finished first in the UAA Invitational in early September and placed second in the UW Sundodger, finishing 11 seconds ahead of Cheseto who placed third.
Western Washington, however, might have an edge in the team race as it returns three All-Americans in Jordan Welling, Bennett Grimes and Blake Medhaug. Welling placed 29th in last year’s national meet, while Medhaug was 36th (after placing 35th at the region meet). Grimes placed 41st in the national meet.
All three are two-time all-conference performers. Welling placed fifth, Grimes was ninth and Medhaug was 10th in the 2008 GNAC meet. Welling (WWU Invitational) and Grimes (CWU Apple Ridge) have wins this fall.
Two other GNAC male athletes also have wins this season. Chris Reed of Western Oregon placed first at both the Lewis & Clark Invitational and the Willamette Grass Course Invitational, while Manuel Santos of Central Washington finished first in a pair of duals with Alaska Fairbanks.
In addition to Reed, Western Oregon’s lineup will include Mike Schmitt, who earned all-conference honors in 2007 with a sixth-place finish.
Another athlete with sights on a Top 10 finish will be Northwest Nazarene freshman Barak Watson, who already has four Top 10 finishes – placing second in the Bob Firman Invitational at Boise and in the open division of the UW Sundodger, fourth in the Roger Curran Invitational at Nampa and eighth in the Chuck Bowles Invitational at Salem.
Regardless of their performances at the conference teams, all GNAC teams are eligible to compete in the NCAA West Regional, which will be held at Golden State Park in San Francisco, Saturday, Nov. 7. The top three men’s teams and the top four women’s teams at the regional meet along with the top two individuals not on a qualifying team or anyone else in the top five qualify for the national meet Nov. 21 at Evansville, Ind.