Pilots upset Ducks in NCAA West Regional; Jesuit girls win Boise NXN regional; S. Ore ready for NAIA

MARCOLA – Sandwiched between the reigning national champions and this season’s No.-1 ranked team, the University of Portland men’s cross country team finished 2^nd at the West Regional Division I meet here on Saturday morning to gain an automatic berth for next week’s national championships. In the process, they defeated the host Oregon Ducks.

“The guys did a nice job of executing our race plan and finishing hard over the last half of the race,” UP’s coach, Rob Conner, said. “The fact that we have five freshmen and a sophomore made it even more impressive.”

Vin Lananna, coach of the Ducks, who have won the last two men’s national championships, was clearly not happy with his team’s performance. “I believe we are a trophy team,” he said, “but we didn’t run like one today.” The Oregon men finished 3^rd, but just 11 points ahead of 4^th-place Washington. Both the Ducks and Huskies were among the teams announced on Sunday as at-large selections for the finals, which will be held on Monday morning, Nov. 23, in Terre Haute, Ind.

Stanford, the nation’s No. 1-ranked team, won the men’s West Regional race, scoring just 27 points, to 84 for Portland, 109 for Oregon and 120 for Washington.

In the women’s race, held on a wet course at the Springfield Country Club, Washington and Oregon went 1-2. The Huskies are the reigning national women’s champions. “Overall, this was our most complete effort,” said the UW coach, Greg Metcalf. The Oregon freshman Jordan Hasay finished 2^nd to lead the Ducks, who were national runnersup a year ago to the Huskies.

Washington went 1-3-4-7-10 to score just 25 points, 10 better than their winning score at the Pac-10 championships a week ago. Oregon was 2^nd with 66, Stanford 3^rd with 94. Oregon State finished 9^th, Portland 16^th, Portland State 24^th.

In high school news, now that the scholastic season has ended, attention turns to the Nike Nationals. That race will be held at Portland Meadows on Saturday, Dec. 5, and qualifying races around the country got under way over the weekend.

In the Northwest Regional meet, held on a brisk, windy day on Saturday at Eagle Island State Park in Boise, the Jesuit girls – running as the Crusader Harriers -- won their race with 106 points to qualify for the NXN. Annamarie Maag finished 2^nd in the individual race, losing to a sophomore from Idaho, Emily Nist, by 11 seconds. Nist, the Idaho 4A state champion this fall, broke the course record, running 17:57.4 for 5k, and helped her team, Bishop Kelly (running as the Knights Running Club) to 2^nd place and the other automatic spot at the national meet. “We had a really good feeling that we would be able to qualify,” Nist told Dave Devine of Dyestat Northwest.

Four at-large teams will be selected later this month.

That means the boys’ team from Crater still has a chance to make it. The Crater Comet XC team, runaway winners of the 5A state championships a week ago, finished 3^rd at Regionals behind two teams from Spokane, Wash. – North Central, the reigning national champions, and Ferris. NC scored 93, Ferris 104 and Crater 126. Portland’s Central Catholic, state 6A champions, was 4^th, with 166.

In the girls’ race, two Washington teams – Shadle Park of Spokane and Glacier Peak – finished 3^rd and 4^th.

The individual boys’ winner was Ben Johnston of North Central, who won the 5k race in 15:29.6, 15 seconds ahead of Michael Williams, of Bellevue, Wash. Williams, only 9^th in the Washington 3A state final a week ago, advances as one of the individual qualifiers for the NXN final. Adam Thorne of Ferris was 3^rd. In the girls’ race, Washingtonians Katie Knight and Amy-Eloise Neale were 3-4.

Willamette finished 2^nd in the West Regional men’s race Saturday afternoon in Claremont, Calif., and qualified for the Division III national race, to be held this coming Saturday morning in Highland Hills, Ohio. The women’s race will start at 8 a.m. Pacific time, the men’s an hour later.

Willamette finished 2^nd to Claremont-Mudd, the host school, 50-64. Matt Parker finished 5^th for Willamette. Shawn Fisher of Linfield (7^th place) and Karl Dickman of Lewis & Clark (9^th) qualified as individual entrants.

In the women’s West Regional race, two Washington schools, Whitworth (49) and Whitman (108) finished 1-2. Linfield was 6^th, Willamette 7^th. Advancing as individual qualifiers were Marci Klimek of Linfield (4^th) and Tina Patel of Willamette (9^th).

The Southern Oregon men’s team is one of the favorites for this weekend’s NAIA national championships. They will be held on Saturday morning at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Vancouver, Wash. The men’s race will begin at 10:30, the women’s at 11:45.

Concordia of Portland, the host institution, has qualified both its men’s and women’s teams for the race.

In the final national NAIA poll, Southern Oregon was ranked No. 1, 1 slim point ahead of Malone College of Ohio, the reigning national champions. Both schools received 11 1^st-place votes. Southern Oregon has never won the national championship.

The NCAA Division I championship races will be televised live and webcast, on Monday morning, Nov. 23, from Terre Haute, Ind. The telecast will be on Versus, the webcast on ncaa.com. The men’s race begins at 9:08 a.m. Pacific time, the women’s race 50 minutes later.

The Oregon men’s team, in a new era with the graduation of such star runners as Galen Rupp, the individual champion a year ago, and Shadrack Kiptoo Biwott, is realistically not expected to defend its team championship but could have a shot at a trophy. Those go to the top four finishers.

The Portland men have never won a trophy. A year ago they finished 7^th, equaling their best finish ever at the nationals.

To do that this year, Conner’s team will have to manage with just one senior, Tommy Betterbed. Betterbed, from Gig Harbor, Wash., had the race of his life on Saturday, finishing 5^th and beating all of the UO runners. “Tommy really came through with a nice race today,” Conner said. “He was 52^nd at Nationals last year, so he still has some unfinished business remaining.”

The other Pilots at Regionals were freshmen Joash Osoro (8^th) and Trevor Dunbar (12^th), the top two frosh in the race; sophomore Alfred Kipchumba (22^nd); redshirt freshman Shane Geiger (40^th), Norwegian freshman Lars Erik Malde (42^nd), and yet another frosh, Jared Bassett (76^th).

The Pilots hung back in the early stages of the 10k race. “Usually it’s hard to get the younger guys to be patient,” Conner said.

Stanford and Oregon were at the front the first half, with UP well back. “We started off in a good place,” Oregon Coach Lananna said, “but then we decided to press the pace, which was not a good thing to do and not our plan.

“In muddy races like today, you want to make sure to establish your position in front early, because it is very hard – if not impossible – to move up. We will have to run a lot tougher and turn it around. We can do it in 10 days.”

Luke Puskedra, in 6^th, was the Ducks’ top finisher. “Both Stanford and Portland had a good and smart race,” Puskedra said. “We as a team have to get the right mindset before next week.”

Behind Puskedra for Oregon came Danny Mercado (14^th), Diego Mercado (28^th), Kenny Klotz (32^nd), A. J. Acosta (33^rd), freshman Mac Fleet (49^th) and Matthew Centrowitz (73^rd). Jordan McNamara, who ran well for the Ducks a week earlier at Pac-10, is expected to join the Oregon team at the NCAA meet, replacing one of Saturday’s seven runners.

At the halfway mark, the Portland Kenyan pair of Osoro and Kipchumba began to work their way through the pack, and they were soon joined, surprisingly, by the lesser-known Betterbed, then by Dunbar as well. At 6,000 meters, the Pilots moved ahead of Oregon in the estimated scoring, and when that was announced to the thousands of fans on hand, many from nearby Eugene, there was a sudden silence, except for jubilation from the handful of noisy UP students who made the trip down I-5. Some even showed up the night before on the late-night Amtrak trains.

The freshman Osoro and Dunbar continued to run near the top 10, while Betterbed pushed into the lead group. Kipchumba, the team’s usual No. 1, fell back. Geiger, in the 5^th position, ran a strong final kilometer.

Stanford went 1-2-3 with Chris Derrick, Elliott Heath and Justin Marpole-Bird. Derrick, a sophomore from the Midwest, is expected to contend for the individual national championship, along with Samuel Chelanga of Liberty, last year’s runnerup. The Cardinal last won the NCAA title in men’s cross country in 2003. Scott Smith of Cal-Santa Barbara was a surprise 4^th and qualified as an individual runner.

In the women’s Regional, the Washington women stepped it up from Pac-10, where they had a narrow 35-42 win over the Ducks.

“I think that as a team we’re getting better,” said Kendra Schaaf, the individual winner on Saturday for the UW. “The more we run together, the better we get and the more competitive we are. At Nationals, we just have to work together.”

Schaaf pulled away over the final two kilometers to win Saturday’s 6k race by 11 seconds over Oregon’s Hasay. Then came two more Huskies, Marie Lawrence and the unheralded Kailey Campbell.

“It started out as a slow race,” Hasay said. “No one really wanted to take the lead.

“I didn’t know what to do, but after the second loop, my coach told me to get it going. I came in 2^nd and I am happy about that. I am not used to running in mud, so it wasn’t an easy race for me.”

Behind Hasay for the Ducks came Nicole Blood (5^th), Alex Kosinski (8^th), Lauren Zaludek (25^th) and Claire Michel (26^th).

“We had all our runners in the top 26, and that was a goal,” Lananna said. “But we’ll have to wait until the Nationals to see how good we really are. We will have to demonstrate all of our skills. We should have been better today, but the really big and important race is next week.”

Washington put all its scorers in the top 10, with Katie Follett 7^th and Christine Babcock 10^th. They ran most of the race together at the front, showing the domination they have had since the middle of the 2008 season when they moved to the top of the national rankings, where they have been ever since.

“It was tough, and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” said Blood, the lone senior on the Oregon squad. “We put out a competitive effort today, but now we have to relax.”

The Huskies will try to defend their national championship next week. Their main competition is expected to come from Villanova, which scored just 23 points to win the tough East Regional over the weekend. Villanova, the school from Philadelphia’s Main Line, ran on this same Springfield course a month ago at the Bill Dellinger Invitational, where they surprisingly trounced the hometown Ducks.

“I am so proud of the way the girls ran together,” the Villanova head coach, Gina Procaccio, said of Saturday’s Regional race. “The team ran great through tough conditions. It was an impressive effort, and we’re excited to get to Nationals.”

They'll find the Huskies and Ducks there waiting for them.