The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Remembering the 1986 Cross Country National Championship
03.26.2013 | Longhorn Foundation
March 26, 2013
Lauren Giudice, Texas Media Relations
Terry Crawford had a plan. With the core of the team that finished in fifth at the national championship the year before returning, Crawford formulated a schedule that would give them the best chance to win the national championship.
So, it was no accident the Texas Longhorns ran the Arizona course where the national meet would be staged in an early season tune-up race. And a match-up with two-time defending champion Wisconsin - in Madison - wasn't a coincidence either.
"That was the goal, to make sure that every stone was uncovered in terms of our preparation," Crawford said. "All the details that could assist an athlete in feeling prepared."
And then they did prepare, with painstaking detail. Crawford and the team studied video from their race in Tucson to prepare for the national championship race. They discussed the layout of the course and how to handle the terrain.
"I felt fortunate as a coach to just sort of be directing them," Crawford said. "It wasn't like I had to do any rah-rah or motivational speeches every day. They had the right focus and belief that they could do that."
Returning All-Americans Liz Natale, Annie Schweitzer and Sandy Blakeslee gave Texas the base it needed. The three of them would often run together and push each other during practices. Blakeslee would start the trio off, and Schweitzer would keep pace in the middle of the race. Natale would take the team home with a kick at the end of the race.
Transfers Trina Leopold and Kelly Champagne joined the team that season and created a depth that the team lacked the year before. All of the pieces came into place.
Crawford credits the championship to the leaders on the team, especially Schweitzer and Leopold. The seniors fostered a positive environment for the younger team members and they all pushed each other to be successful.
"I think we all knew we could really contend," said team member Terese Laughlin. "Terry was always very confident in us and made us believe that we could do it, and I think as the season went on we realized that this is something special that is happening."
Crawford did everything she could to give her team the advantage on that warm November day in Arizona. Instead of having the traditional burnt orange uniform, she dressed the team in all black, and they only took off their sweats to reveal the new uniforms right before the race.
"That's part of the great fun of preparing teams and just putting a strategy together and that's one of the things I enjoyed as a coach is just those little details that can give us the edge, and the athletes totally bought into it," Crawford said. "We hope that gave us a little edge to confuse the competition, but who knows?"
Blakeslee affirms that it did.
"Uniforms meant a lot. We always wore the burnt orange or white and burnt orange. At the national meet, we had black and we had to keep our sweats on until the meet. (Crawford) was a really good strategist," Blakeslee said. "That way we had black bottoms on and someone is running along and they had the perspective to catch up with the people in burnt orange, but there was no burnt orange. They didn't know who we were. That was a stealth thing we did."
It all came down to red versus black, as Crawford imagined. The Wisconsin cross country powerhouse threatened the Longhorns' undefeated season. Though the Longhorns upset the top-ranked Badgers in their season finale, anything can happen in a cross country race.
Schweitzer twisted her ankle while running in the sand during the race and finished 19th, much lower than she had expected.
"In my opinion, winning a cross country title is one of the hardest things you can do," Schweitzer said. "The reason it's so challenging is because you have a prescribed distance, and you never know what kind of weather will take place on the day of your event so you have a different surface, different weather conditions."
The Tucson course was on a golf course and before the last 1,000 meters of the race, there was a long strip of sand. The team knew the race would be won in that last section.
After the race ended, the runners were whisked off to be drug tested by officials and no one knew who won. Though Crawford tried to count the runners as they crossed the finish line, it was so close that she and the other coaches couldn't determine who won.
The Longhorns waited patiently and nervously for two hours for the announcement. It was so close that the officials had to go through the films manually and tally the score. The team sat on a hill near the golf course's clubhouse that overlooked the course where they had just battled.
"As I recall, my position as the coach was to try to stay calm and wait it out without trying to let out a lot of emotion and just let the results and calculations take its course without extending a lot of emotion and being prepared for whatever the outcome was," Crawford said. "But the team kept its composure and kept its fingers crossed and waited for the official results to come in."
Finally, it was announced that Texas had won by just two points, the closest finish in NCAA cross country history. The team cheered, sang and yelled in celebration. After practicing at least three hours a day for six days a week, the work paid off. They breezed through the Southwest Conference Championship and NCAA Regionals earlier that season. But nothing compared to that moment on that hill.
"I just remember how excited we all were," said Blakeslee, who had Texas' top individual run by finishing fifth. "We were jumping around the trophy. People at the course gave us a hard time that we needed to stick to running instead of singing the 'Eyes of Texas."
On the Longhorns' flight home, the plane flew over the UT campus and the Tower was lit orange with the No. 1. The pilot announced the team's victory over the intercom. The team's first stop when they arrived in Austin was to head to the Tower. They took pictures in front of it with their cameras and enjoyed their victory.
That 1986 championship team remains the only Texas team to win a national title in cross country.
"The first time seeing that tower lit, that was amazing," Schweitzer said. "It's one of those things that I still get the chills about to this day. We're the only southern team that's ever won a cross country title from the female side. It was quite an honor, and it's still an honor and it's still a picture I have up in my personal office. With women's sports at Texas and that's what we expected and that's what we accomplished."
