{"id":5133,"date":"2013-09-20T16:47:21","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T16:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/cross-country-heads-south-for-meet-of-champions\/"},"modified":"2013-09-20T16:47:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T16:47:21","slug":"cross-country-heads-south-for-meet-of-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/cross-country-heads-south-for-meet-of-champions\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross Country Heads South For Meet Of Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cross Country Heads South For Meet Of Champions<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Course Map<\/span><\/p>\n

ALBANY, N.Y. \u2013<\/strong> The University at Albany men\u2019s and women\u2019s cross country teams will travel to the Bronx\u2019s famed Van Cortlandt Park this weekend to compete in Iona\u2019s 19th<\/sup> Annual Br. Doyle Meet of Champions.\u00a0 The meet will gather teams from a total of 21 schools, with 19 competing for both the men and women.\u00a0 The women\u2019s 6k (6100m) race is scheduled to kick off at 9:30 a.m. and the men will follow with an 8k at 10:15 a.m.<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Cortlandt Park will play host to two meets later in the season:\u00a0 the NCAA Northeast Regional Championship on November 15 and the IC4A\/ECAC Championship on November 23.\u00a0 Attending the meet will give the Danes a preview of the course they will compete on later in the year, but with one notable caveat.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCAA regional is going to be run at this site but the course will be different,\u201d said Roberto Vives, Director of Track and Field and Cross Country.\u00a0 \u201cIt will give us a chance to see the regional course and run on a portion of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPart of our warm-down will be to review the actual regional course,\u201d said head cross country coach Matt Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

UAlbany returns to the Meet of Champions after passing on the event a year ago.\u00a0 In total, UAlbany has fielded a team seven times in the 19 iterations of the race, including this weekend.\u00a0 The men have finished in third place each of the last two times they have attended the meet (2011, 2010).\u00a0 The women earned their highest ever finish as a team the last time around, finishing in fourth place (2011).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, despite competing at this meet in the past, there will be a certain amount of unfamiliarity with the renowned cross country site.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been major construction on the course over the last year, so we aren\u2019t quite sure what the course will be like,\u201d said Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

The last time the Danes competed the women finished first and the men finished fourth at the America East Pre-Conference meet.\u00a0 Brittany Lane won meet individually for the women, finishing only nine seconds off the course record.\u00a0 Christopher Buchanan was the highest place finisher on the men\u2019s side, finishing sixth overall.<\/span><\/p>\n

With only one meet in the books, Coach Jones has a better idea of the identities of the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams this year, but there are still things that need to come into focus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe men\u2019s team isn\u2019t so much young as they are inexperienced.\u00a0 Those who are young are still making the adjustment to 8k races from the 5k\u2019s they ran in high school.\u00a0 The race this weekend gives them an opportunity to run another 8k and gives us a chance to see which of them might be best suited to move up to 10k,\u201d said Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two weeks ago the women beat Vermont, who is ranked 13th<\/sup> in the Northeast region.\u00a0 This weekend, Iona, Yale, and Brown are in the field of competitors UAlbany will face, and all three are ranked in the Northeast.\u00a0 How the women perform against the field will show Coach Jones how they match up with the competition they will face moving forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe beat Vermont and didn\u2019t move into the rankings,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThe women need to beat people head-to-head.\u00a0 Performing well against Northeast ranked teams should help us break in.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Regional rankings identify the top 15 teams in each region.\u00a0 The women were ranked for the first time ever in 2012 when they finished the season ranked 14th<\/sup>.\u00a0 To this point in the 2013 campaign, the women have yet to be ranked, something Coach Jones hopes will change.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe may be racing a little tired on Saturday.\u00a0 We had a hard week of workouts, and our athletes are still conditioning and transitioning into different types of training.\u00a0 But I am pleased with the training that we have done so far and we\u2019re moving in the right direction,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hopeful for good performances this weekend, but I won\u2019t be disappointed if it doesn\u2019t all come together,\u201d Jones added.\u00a0 \u201cWe are only at the end of our second two-week cycle of training, and our fourth week with the full group.\u00a0 Right now, it\u2019s still early in the season and we\u2019re working with the end in mind.\u00a0 Everything we do in September and October is intended to work as a positive push for what we want to do in November.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\nThe Albany Student Press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross Country Heads South For Meet Of Champions Course Map ALBANY, N.Y. \u2013 The University at Albany men\u2019s and women\u2019s cross country teams will travel to the Bronx\u2019s famed Van Cortlandt Park this weekend to compete in Iona\u2019s 19th Annual Br. Doyle Meet of Champions.\u00a0 The meet will gather teams from a total of 21 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[983],"tags":[2078,1767,1900,2076,1931,2077],"class_list":["post-5133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albany-student-press","tag-champions","tag-country","tag-cross","tag-heads","tag-meet","tag-south"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techiteens.com\/review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}