Sasha Ambrose
Sports Reporter
This year’s ISU cross country team is hoping for a stronger season by working together.
Both the men’s and women’s teams have a large crop of returning runners and two enthusiastic captains, Jesse Allen, senior, and Rachel McGovern, junior, set the pace into the team’s new season.
In the preseason coaches’ polls, the men’s team was picked to finish sixth in the Big Sky, while the women were picked to finish seventh.
Last year, at the Mountain Region Championship, the women’s team came in 12th place out of 19 teams with 335 points, and the men’s team was 13th with 380 points. It was their highest placement since 2014.
“We did a cutdown race at the beginning of the season, and it basically shows your fitness level, and a lot of the freshmen were finishing,” Allen said. “Compared to last year’s runners and those in previous years, they were finishing ahead of them, so I think, personally, this could shape up to be one of the best years of cross country that I’ve ever seen.”
The Bengals had no major injuries over the summer, which meant that everyone was ready to race for the first meet last Saturday at the Utah Valley Invitational in Orem.
“This year is going to be really interesting, because last year we had Jenica [Dodge], and she was a standout,” McGovern said. “She was always up in the front, and this year, it really could go so many ways, we’re all so close together.”
Dodge graduated last year after a phenomenal cross country career with ISU. Coming off of that success, the new team captains have a strategy up their sleeves to continue that progress for this season.
“We really want to emphasize working as a unit, not working as an individual,” McGovern said. “So, in workouts, we try to get as many girls to group up as possible.”
This year, all efforts are put into running as a pack, and getting new recruits to step up and take on more responsibility. This strategy is meant to foster teamsmanship and competitiveness.
“I think a lot of new people’s fears is that they can’t hang with the guys and that they should be letting the older people take care of it,” Allen said. “And eventually, I think it’s important that they take on leadership roles, so showing them that they can do it, and then one day doing it better themselves.”
The captains are implementing this in practices also, with added team bonding, and grouping up in workouts, in the hopes that the strong bonds forged between the runners will keep them together once the starting gun goes off.
“Last year, we were really spread out in races, and now we want to group up a lot more,” McGovern said. “I think everyone will see that we’ve improved, but we’ve improved together.”
Both teams have been calm and collected leading into their seasons, focusing internally on getting on the top of their game. There’s a strong rivalry against Southern Utah and it’s ingrained in the team’s mind to do what it takes to beat them.
“I think that everybody likes to talk big before the season starts, then once it begins, they settle down,” McGovern said.
The Bengals want to put more time into each other, promoting togetherness, leadership skills and team spirit as they move into the 2018 season, hoping to carry on the tradition of progression and making Idaho State one of the strongest cross country teams in the region.
“We just have to keep a level head, and see where we go from there,” said Allen. “But at the end of the day, if we’re not all working on one common goal, we’re not going to accomplish anything.”
