The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Going the distance: Freshmen exceed expectations
10.28.2010 | XC: Women_Old, Track & Field / Cross Country
Oct. 28, 2010
Mary Kusek, Texas Media Relations
This year, the Texas Women's Cross Country team set its sights high and returned several seasoned upperclassmen to fill key leadership roles. Coach Steve Sisson also added a talented group of freshmen to his roster that he expected would train hard, learn quickly and eventually lead the Longhorn Women's Cross Country program.
For Marielle Hall, Megan Siebert and Sara Sutherland, eventually was not soon enough.
This freshmen trio has provided the biggest spark for a team that has had shown a great amount of early success and is looking to make a statement heading into the championship portion of its 2010 campaign. At the season-opening Johnny Morris Invitational, where Texas recorded a perfect team score of 15, Siebert and Sutherland occupied two of the top five scoring spots for the Longhorns. At the Ricardo Romo Texas Classic, it was Hall and Siebert who stepped up to help guide the Texas women to their second straight perfect team score.
Perhaps most impressive, however, was Hall and Siebert's performance at the 2010 ISU Pre-Nationals Invitational. The Longhorns placed fifth, making a striking improvement upon last year's 12th place finish at the same meet, and Hall and Siebert ran first and third for the Longhorns, respectively. In addition, Texas was the only school at Pre-Nationals to finish two freshmen in the top 40.
"Typically we expect freshmen to take a little while to figure things out and usually the first big national-level meet like Pre-Nationals is a shock to their systems, but honestly, I feel like my freshmen have led my team," Sisson says.
The impact of Hall and Siebert in their first collegiate meet on a national stage came as a very pleasant surprise for Sisson as the Longhorns look toward the upcoming championship season, including Big 12s which take place this Saturday, Oct. 30. One of the factors to which he attributes this success is the guidance provided by the team's veteran runners.
"There are great upperclassmen leading the way for them emotionally and in terms of leadership," Sisson says. "It allows the freshmen just to run and not have to carry a load of anything other than just running to the best of their abilities."
Hall agrees. "All of the upperclassmen have told us how their freshman year went and what they did to have fun, stay relaxed and healthy when it comes to races," she says. "They have been so helpful for guiding you through what it will be like and how to prepare for meets."
Sisson also points to an inspired approach to training on the part of the freshmen that has played a role in their early success.
"Their mindset coming in was that they were going to make an impact and that they had made a crucial decision to do that," Sisson says. "A lot of freshmen will talk that, but this group of freshmen has walked it. They have backed it up race after race and workout after workout and they've actually forced my upperclassmen to run harder and to train harder."
This has led to the natural development of healthy rivalry among the upper- and underclassmen, something Hall believes is a key to the Longhorn women's achievement going forward.
"I think it's helpful to have competition with the upperclassmen because it reminds you every day that you're going to have to work hard and always be focused if you want to compete strongly in all of your races," Hall says. "If you are competitive on your team, you'll be even more competitive once you get out there."
The Longhorns, who are ranked for the first time since 2003 at No. 15, seek to maintain their momentum as they head into this weekend's Big 12 Championship meet.
"People finally see now that we are a legitimate team and that is awesome," junior Mia Behm says. "Now people know that we have good runners and that we are going to do something good at both the conference and national levels. Pre-Nationals definitely gave us a confidence boost beating a lot of ranked teams, and it wasn't even our best day, so we're really hoping to see even better results at Big 12s."