Daniels paces Owls to C-USA title
Revenge, although not always admired, can sometimes be very sweet. The women’s cross country team got to experience a bit of revenge last weekend, wresting the Conference USA title from the defending champion University of Alabama-Birmingham at the C-USA Cross Country Championships in El Paso, Texas.
The Owls, currently ranked 16th in the nation by cross country coaches, left little doubt about who was the top team in the C-USA. In the most dominant performance in conference meet history, Rice’s score of 26 points was far better than second-place University of Tulsa’s 54, to say nothing of Southern Methodist University’s third-place score of 105. UAB finished fourth in its title defense.
Rice also bested the previous record of 29, set by former members Marquette University in 2002.
The team will now take aim at a much higher goal: the NCAA South Central regional championship. Held Nov. 10, Rice will travel to Fayetteville, Ark., to compete against perennial favorite and host University of Arkansas, which is ranked 10th in the nation. Head coach Jim Bevan, who won coach of the year honors with his team’s championship, said he believes the Owls will be confident enough to challenge the Razorbacks.
“We look forward to the challenge, like we looked forward to everything this year,” Bevan said. “I’m confident that we will give a good accounting of ourselves racing the [field],” Bevan said.
The Owls will enter the regional championships as a team that is getting constantly stronger as the season progresses. The gap between Rice’s top runner, senior Marissa Daniels, and the rest of her teammates has continued to shrink as the season progressed. Rice placed all five scoring runners within the top ten, with each scorer finishing within 36 seconds of each other.
Coming in behind only conference champion Alex Becker of Tulsa and C-USA Freshman of the Year Silje Fjortoft of Southern Methodist University, Daniels placed third overall with a time of 17 minutes, 50 seconds. Freshman Allison Pye followed in fourth place with a time of 18:07, with fellow freshmen Becky Wade finishing fifth with a time of 18:20.
On top of Bevan’s honor, Rice also had six runners gain all-conference honors. Daniels, Pye and Wade received first-team all-conference honors for their top five finishes, while seniors Callie Wells and Lennie Waite and sophomore Nicole Mericle received second-team honors with their finishes within the top 10.
Pye’s and Wade’s first-team all C-USA honors are all the more impressive considering that both were running in their first conference meet. However, Wade believes the calming influence of the team’s upperclassmen helped the duo settle into form.
“We were pretty nervous, because this was our first conference meet ever,” Wade said. “But having the upperclassmen there helped a lot and being able to run with each other and with the older girls who had already run in conference before helped a lot, too.”
The Owls’ upperclassmen helped to solidify the dominating performance. Wells finished sixth with her time of 18:22, while Mericle ended the race only four seconds later to place eighth, rounding out the scoring. Waite garnered the last of Rice’s all-conference honors with her time of 18:48, placing her tenth.
The key to Rice’s success was the same conservative strategy that helped them win the Notre Dame Invitational on Sept. 28. Last Saturday, the Owls fell behind as a group early, only to collectively move up later in the race. This strategy especially proved beneficial in the high elevation of El Paso, where a fast start could spell disaster for even the most well-conditioned teams. Bevan said he thought that the team’s mental toughness and cohesion helped the Owls focus on sticking to the race strategy.
“In the heat of battle, this is a very cool, calm group,” Bevan said. “They have a lot of belief in each other.”
While Bevan said he believes the team ran its best race of the year last Saturday at the conference meet, he thinks the best is yet to come. He said he knows his team is on a mission to prove they are among the nation’s elite teams.
“Since [Notre Dame], we’ve had a common goal of [being] the absolute best we can be this year,” Bevan said. “You don’t always have the chance and opportunity like we do. [We have] to take this as far as we can take it, and they have gotten better and better.”
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