Hawkeyes are ready for Notre Dame, but want to maintain their season goals.

By Connor Sindberg
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As the competition ramps up, head coach Layne Anderson hopes to see progress in his team’s performance.

This afternoon, the Hawks will travel to South Bend, Indiana for the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational. The 5,000-meter race is slated to start at 1 p.m. at the Burke Golf Course on the campus of Notre Dame University.

Last season Junior Carolyn Newhouse led the Hawkeyes to a seventh-place finish at the Invitational. Sophomore Marta Bote Gonzalez and junior Tess Wilberding had the second and third best times on the team.

Today’s event will be the third competition for the Hawkeyes this season. The Hawks have gotten off to a disappointing start, finishing third in the Early Bird Invitational and fifth in the Illinois State Invitational.

With higher expectations for the season, junior Carolyn Newhouse believes the team has not reached their full potential yet.

“I’m excited for Notre Dame, I’m hoping that our team will all run our best race together, I feel like we haven’t all matched up on our full potential as a team yet.” she said.

Newhouse isn’t the only one who knows the team needs to be at their best today. Anderson understands the competition will certainly be much tougher. He knows this will be the toughest test so far that his team has faced.

“The competition is outstanding,” he said. “We will be tested and we will need to race at our best to compete.”

One runner who has been at her best for the Hawkeyes is sophomore Madison Waymire. In the first two meets she has finished in the top five respectfully. After her excellent start, the sophomore is not ready to settle, she is hungry for another top five finish.

“For Notre Dame I would like to place as high as I can individually and also have a good race across the board as a team,” Waymire said.

Waymire knows that head coach Layne Anderson’s goal is to get the team to improve race to race. One way the Hawks can reach the goals set out by their coach is by continuing to practice with a purpose and to be at their best at the end of the season.

“Coach has really stressed just building up throughout the season,” Waymire said. “We obviously go into every meet wanting to place as high as we can, but our goals as a team is learning how to race together, we also want to pull each other through tough races in order to improve as a team.”

With the competition getting tougher, Anderson expects his team to perform at a high level, especially after almost a three-week layoff. He is optimistic that his team will show off the hard work they’ve put in during practice time.

“We are well prepared and our expectation is to demonstrate the fitness and development that we have been working on in practice this week,” Anderson said. “At the end of the day I want to see signs of great progress from the Illinois State meet.”

Follow @CSindberg32 on Twitter for news, updates, and analysis of the Iowa women’s cross-country team.