Hawkeye women’s cross-country looks for improvement in regional and championship races.
By Connor Sindberg
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The Iowa women’s cross-country team will kick off the new season this evening when it hosts the Hawkeye Early Bird Invitational at the Ashton
Cross-Country Course.
The Hawkeyes will play host to Iowa State, Illinois State, and Northern Iowa. Iowa State comes into the meet as the clear favorite. The Cyclones are ranked No.1 in the Sept. 1 NCAA preseason rankings, and they’re also top dog in the Midwest Region rankings. Illinois State is ranked No. 12, while the Hawkeyes are ranked No. 11 in the Midwest Region.
Cross-country head coach Layne Anderson is not worried about rankings right now and knows the meet will serve as a warm-up.
“The goal for [today] is to have success and to leave healthy,” he said.
Anderson believes later competitions are more important.
“Our focus is on October and November,” he said. “It’s great to run well now, but it means nothing if you’re not healthy for the championship meets.”
And to be ready for the championship meets, Anderson said the team needs progression from each runner race to race.
“Last year, we certainly had an outstanding team, but I felt like we never reached our potential,” he said. “Hopefully, with some of the older kids we can get a little more consistency this year to help lead the inexperienced runners.”
Experience is difficult to find on this year’s squad; the Hawkeyes have zero seniors and only four juniors. The rest of the team comprises five sophomores and eight freshmen.
Two experienced runners will be relied on to lead the group, junior Tess Wilberding and sophomore Madison Waymire.
Both believe it’s about how they finish the season, not how they start.
“Our major focus as a team is that we want to move up in placement in the Big Ten,” Wilberding said. “We want to place highly at the conference and regional championships.”
When the Big Ten meet comes around in November, the Hawks wants to be at their peak performance levels and in good health.
“As a team, we want to stay strong and healthy the whole year,” Waymire said. “I’m excited to see everyone show up when it counts at the end of season.”
As for today’s meet, the plan is to get experience for the younger runners.
“Our expectations are to just go out and get a bit of competition and experience under our belts before we get into the later championship part of the season,” Waymire said.
She knows that one key component in the first competition is that each individual runner gets her fitness level on the right track.
“[Today’s] race is also a good race to just check our fitness levels and get excited for the season to come,” Waymire said.
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