While the Iowa football fans stress over the loss of the team’s top 2008 performers, members of the women’s cross-country team see losing their top athletes as an advantage to the team’s cohesion this year.

Last year’s stars, Racheal Marchand and Sarah Spencer Perry, led the squad to a 24th-place finish at the NCAA national meet. But this year’s group of runners plans to place much higher, even without Marchand and Sperry.

“Last year, we definitely had a really defined front-runner in Racheal,” junior Hannah Roeder said. “But I think this year we have a deeper team with more experience, so I think we’ll have a class that will be a little ahead of where we were last year.”

The squad’s new strategy is to focus less on one or two top times and run together as a pack, hoping to have more women finish higher and earn more points.

Although the strategy and the attitude of the team may have changed in the absence of Marchand and Perry, the women said their workouts have remained consistent with what they’ve done in the past.

Iowa head coach Layne Anderson said the only difference is that he’s pacing the harriers and coaching them more “conservatively” in order to prevent his runners from peaking before October — a crucial qualifying month of the season.

“We’ve been through three-consecutive NCAA championships, so now we’re at a point where that’s always a goal,” he said. “We have many returning individuals to improve and a few newcomers to contribute to our success as well.”

Among these newcomers is freshman Megan Ranegar, who said her transition to the team has been easy because all the harriers run together and support each other.

“Everyone has helped me out,” she said. “That’s part of the mentality of running in a pack — just getting along and running together. Coach said we’ve been forming better packs and staying together better than in the past few years, which will help us get points.”

This year’s pack consists of 21 runners ranging from freshmen to a graduate student. Of those 21, 18 will compete in the Hawkeye Invitational on Friday, their first official meet of the season.

The Hawkeyes will enter the meet without having chosen team captains yet, which some runners said may be because no one has stood out as the leader just quite yet.

“As far as training has been going, we’ve had different people finishing first,” Ranegar said.

Sophomore Betsy Flood said she couldn’t think of anyone who has stood out among the rest, but the team’s depth and consistency makes up for its lack of “standout people.”

Even though they run as a group, Anderson noted five individuals whom he predicts will cross the finish line first, two being Flood and Roeder. He pointed to graduate student Megan Lessard, sophomore Brook Eilers, and junior Amanda Hardesty as runners he expects to have breakout seasons.

“We’re very capable of making it to the championship again this year,” Hardesty said. “We lost some amazing runners, and we don’t have any people here now with those credentials. But we’re really talented, and with all of us combined, we’re capable of getting [to the NCAA championship].”