Washington State XC: HS and College teams dominate

NCAA Division 1 Regional Preview

By Jack Pfeifer

PASCO, Wash.

This is cross country country.

Washington State’s 50^th high school cross country championships were held here on the pastoral East Side of the state last Saturday. Thousands of spectators, paying $9 a head, poured over the gently rolling hills of the Sun Willows Golf Course to watch 10 races between 10 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon.

Cross country is not a silent, austere sport here in the rainy Pacific Northwest. It is passionate, rabid. Parents, cousins, coaches and soul mates race from point to point, cheering at every opportunity.

“I cheer like crazy for my son,” a mother said. “Afterward, he says that when he runs, it is all within. He said he doesn’t hear a thing.”

This isolated corner of the country is on the verge of taking over the sport.

Most Div. I teams had the week off, so coaches were on hand to scout next year’s crop.

There were plenty of purple-and-gold Washington caps, one of them worn by Greg Metcalf, the winner of the 1987 A/B state title for Ephrata High and now head coach of the Huskies. A week ago, the UW women scored an unprecedented perfect-15 to win the Pac-10 and make themselves the team to beat in this year’s NCAA championships. Metcalf wasn’t gloating. “We still have plenty of work to do,” he said.

There were plenty of the familiar lemon-lime Oregon sweats out on the course as well. The Ducks, looking to repeat as NCAA men’s champions, are led by Olympian Galen Rupp, a Portlander. Oregon’s women’s team isn’t too shabby either; they’re ranked No.2 in the country, behind the Huskies, and were 2^nd a year ago. (Three of the stars of this year’s UO team have East Coast roots. Melissa Grelli, a recent Georgetown grad, and Lindsey Scherf, a Harvard grad from Scarsdale, are both in graduate school in Eugene but with eligibility remaining; Nicole Blood, a junior now, ran for Saratoga Springs before moving to California her senior year in high school.)

Also working the crowd was Rob Conner, coach of the little-known University of Portland Pilots. The Pilots are merely ranked 4^th in the country right now for Div. I men. “Are we that good?” Conner said, perhaps downplaying the small Catholic school’s success. They finished 2^nd in the West Regional a year ago, losing only to Oregon, the eventual national champions. They have won the West Coast Conference championship 30 years in a row, doing so with homegrown talent.

“I recruit a lot in the state of Washington,” Conner said. “I grew up here.” Conner ran for Timberline H.S. in the Olympia area, attended U of P himself, then returned 18 years ago to become head coach. “We have a lot of talent in the Portland area, but most of them want to leave home for school, so I just cross the border to recruit.”

Sure enough, there’s Northwest talent all over the country. Ryan Vail of Portland, for example, is a top member of the high-flying Oklahoma State team, currently ranked No. 2 nationally. The coach of that team, Dave Smith, is from the state of, you guessed it, Washington.

The No. 1 runner on this year’s Princeton men’s team, winners of the Heps, is Michael Maag, who is from, yes, Portland, Ore. (His younger sister, Annamarie, led powerhouse Jesuit to an Oregon state championship this year as a sophomore.)

As to the competition itself here at the Washington championships, who’s to say who the future stars will be. The boys 3A race got plenty of attention, when a newcomer just arrived from Alaska, Michael Miller, a senior at Mt. Rainier H.S. in the Seattle area, surprised the star-studded group from North Central H.S. of Spokane.

Miller, who has run under 50 seconds for the quarter, won his 5k race going away in 15:18, the 2^nd-fastest time ever run on the course. Behind him came the boys from North Central – 2-3-4-5, then 11^th, for 25 points, the 2^nd-lowest score ever at these championships. No wonder some of the current rankings have NC the No. 1 team in the country.

No. 1 high school team, No. 1 college men’s team, No. 1 college women’s team...

North Central was led by three seniors -- Andrew Kimpel (2^nd), Jeff Howard (3^rd) and Leon Dean (5^th), even though Kimpel was ill earlier in the week. “Those three all year have led us,” Coach Jon Knight told Kevin Anthony of the Tri-City Herald. “In workouts, races, ethics as a team, honor as a team. They’re just nice, quality young men.”

North Central will be shooting for a spot in the Nike Team Nationals next month in Portland. If they make it, you can bet there will be a caravan of supporters making their way south from Spokane, trying to show the rest of the country that cross country is king in the Pacific Northwest.

Regionals are next

The nine Division I regional meets take place this weekend. The top two teams in each will qualify for the NCAA championships, to be held Monday morning, Nov. 24, in Terre Haute, Ind. The remaining spots will be filled by the use of a complex points equation for teams as well as by a few unaffiliated individuals.

All eyes will be on the West Regional, to be held at Stanford, where the top-ranked Oregon men hope to move on to defend their national championship. Top-10 teams Stanford and Portland will also be on hand. “Stanford scares me,” said Portland Coach Rob Conner. “They ran very well at Pac-10. We’ll have our hands full with them.”

Stanford’s surprise No. 1 runner has been super-frosh Chris Derrick, from Illinois. Portland counters with its own newcomer, Kenyan David Kipchumba, along with veteran David Kinsella, who finished in the top 10 at last year’s NCAA. UP’s concern is the uncertainty of its 5^th man.

The West Region also dominates the women’s side, as No. 1 Washington and No. 2 Oregon will tangle again, along with the defending national champions from Stanford. Washington had a phenomenal 1-2-3-4-5-6 finish at conference, a feat they’ll be hard-pressed to repeat.

The Div. I Regionals and this year’s host schools: Northeast at Columbia (VCP), Mid-Atlantic at Princeton, South at Tennessee, Southeast at Wake Forest, South Central at Baylor, Great Lakes at Purdue, Midwest at Oklahoma State, Mountain at Colorado State, West at Stanford

The Div. III Regionals will also be held this weekend, pointing toward the national championships on Saturday, Nov. 22. Nick McDonough’s New York University men’s team are the defending national champions. Although in a rebuilding season, the Violets have moved up through the rankings in recent weeks.