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October 26, 2007 > Sports > Zivick leads the way at Chile Pepper Festival

Zivick leads the way at Chile Pepper Festival

By Brody Rollins | Thresher staff

Injuries do not always have to be gruesome to cost a team a win. The men’s cross country team was one sore calf away from putting together its best outing of the season at the Chile Pepper Festival in Fayetteville, Ark., on Oct. 13, as they placed 11th in a very strong field with 32 teams and over 300 runners.

The Owls were able to beat perennial in-state powerhouses Baylor University and the University of Texas, but it was the eighth ranked University of Arkansas team that claimed the victory with 47 points. Abilene Christian University, the top-ranked team in Division II, finished in second place with 74 points and Virginia Tech came in third with 162.

For the Owls, last week’s results were a step in the right direction as the top four finishers on the team finished within 13 seconds of one another. As they look forward to the Conference USA Cross Country Championships tomorrow, the squad knows it will need a near-perfect performance if they are going to have any shot at winning.

The conference features two of the top teams in the country: third-ranked University of Texas El Paso and 17th-ranked University of Tulsa. UTEP is led by five outstanding runners, namely Patrick Mutai, the two-time defending C-USA Cross Country Athlete of the Year. However, the Miners’ roster, unlike the Owls’, lacks depth.

Barring a collapse by the Miners, the Owls will need to overtake a surprisingly strong Tulsa squad that has been running consistently all year. Tulsa made the national rankings for the first time ever in school history earlier this week after defeating eight teams ranked in the top 30 at their last race. The Golden Hurricane’s top runner is Edwin Henshaw, who won the senior New Zealand cross country title on Aug. 4.

The job of pacing the team at the conference championships looks to be much more difficult given the high elevation in El Paso. Runners who start fast will have to adjust to quicker oxygen loss, and the Owls will need to make this recovery to stay in contention.

“We’ll try to run as a pack, hold back a little bit because it’s at altitude and unleash them after people in the last couple miles,” head coach Jon Warren (Jones ‘88) said.

The Owls will also need junior Aaron Robson to recover from a calf injury that kept him out of last week’s race. If Robson, Rice’s top runner so far, is unable to perform on Saturday, the load will fall on the same six who finished the race last week.

Sophomore Scott Zivick led the Owls at the Chile Pepper Festival with a 56th-place finish. It is the first time Zivick has posted Rice’s lowest time this season. However, three other Owls finished within 13 seconds of his time. Senior Brett Olson came in 57th, followed by junior Justin Maxwell in 58th, and sophomore Brad Morris in 63rd.

Although sophomore John Buck came in 110th, he played a unique role usually associated solely with cycling.

“We had John Buck take us through three miles, Tour de France style, as a domestique,” said Olson. “The deal was for us to stay together for that and John would drop off and try to finish well.”

In previous races, there was not a designated runner setting the pace, leading the pack to fall apart early in the races. But this strategy, as evidenced by the tight finish, seems to work.

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