Junior Brad Miller and senior Nana Sang-Bender strive to keep the Orange's NCAA hopes alive at Van Cortlandt Park this Saturday at the NCAA Northeast Regional Championship.
Orange Takes Final Step Toward NCAA Championship
11/14/2008 9:48:25 AM | Cross Country
SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The men and women's cross country teams vie for a chance to represent Syracuse at the NCAA Championships this Saturday, November 15, when the Orange takes on all challengers at the NCAA Northeast Regional Championship at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, N.Y. The top two teams and four individuals from each of the nine regional championships (Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Mountain, Northeast, South, South Central, Southeast and West) make the grade for Nationals on Monday, November 24 in Terre Haute, Ind.
Race times are scheduled to start at 11:00 a.m. for the men and the women's competition starts at 11:45 a.m.
"We hope that the men can place somewhere in the top three of the Northeast Region," head coach Chris Fox said. "If they can fall into one of those three slots, I think we have a pretty good shot at going to Nationals."
The Orange men last competed as a team at the NCAA Championship in 1974. The Syracuse men won the National Championship in 1951. The women have never qualified for Nationals as a team.
"I really think our lineup has a superb opportunity to become the first women's cross country team in Syracuse University history to compete at the NCAA Championship," Fox said. "They have run amazing all year and if they continue on that pace, nothing will keep them down."
The women will be confronted with a 6K course while the men prime themselves for the first 10K of the year at Van Cortlandt Park.
The Orange revisits the same course it ran on two weeks ago in the BIG EAST Championship where both the men and women's squads finished in fifth place. Junior Brad Miller led the Syracuse men with a fourth-place individual effort in a time of 24:37 in the 8K while senior Nana Sang-Bender was the victor for the Orange women, concluding her BIG EAST career with a 14th place finish in the 6K at 20:59.
As for the rest of the men's distance team, junior Dan Busby provided the Orange with a 19th place finish of 25:08 while three freshmen furnished SU with times of 25:31, 25:39 and 25:50. Pat Dupont, Griff Graves and Steve Weeks finished 33rd, 38th and 43rd place, in that order. Sophomores Stephen Murdock and Curtis Bixler picked up 50th and 65th place, correspondingly, with times of 25:59 and 26:20.
On the women's side, junior Maegan Krifchin continued finished the BIG EAST Championship in 19th place with a time of 21:13. Another assortment of underclassmen represented the Orange as freshman Heather Stephens lead the charge of young harriers in 26th place with a clip of 21:16. Freshman Lauren Penney finished up in 21:31 for 30th place while sophomore Catherine Desarle's jaunt of 21:45 earned her a 40th place ranking. First-year runner Lauryn Macfawn and sophomores Rebekah Mackay and Katie Hursey concluded Friday's conference meet in 47th, 51st and 53rd place with outings of 22:00, 22:06 and 22:09, respectively. Freshman Carly Hamond rounded out the Orange effort in 76th place with a trip of 22:54.
Out of 12 possible combined finishes for the Orange this season, Syracuse has finished ahead of the pack in half of them. In the first two races of the year, the Orange men and women both won first place at the Harry Lang Invitational on September 6 and then sustained its speed at the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational with the same results. As a tune up for the BIG EAST Championship, the Orange fashioned first places times at the John Reif Memorial on October 24 in neighboring Ithaca, N.Y.
Junior Brad Miller has been a pillar for the Orange to lean on this season. Out of the four races Miller has participated in this year, he has finished the fastest in three of them. He claimed second place overall at the Paul Short Invitational, fifteenth at the Pre-Nationals race and a team-best fifth overall at the BIG EAST Championship.
Senior Nana Sang-Bender and junior Maegan Krifchin maintained a dominating presence in this year's races from 2007. Sang-Bender has led the Orange in the last three consecutive BIG EAST races while Krifchin has been a mainstay for Fox's lineup. This season, both harriers finished ahead of everyone else on SU's line up in two of the four races they have run in. Sang-Bender's 11th place finish at the Pre-Nationals and fifth place time at the conference championship were both tops for SU's women. Krifchin finished second and fifth, respectively at the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational and Paul Short Invite to direct the Orange.
Last season at the NCAA Regional Championship, the Orange men finished in third place behind senior Jeff Scull. The SU women placed fourth behind Sang-Bender at Franklin Park in Boston, Mass. Scull went on to represent Syracuse at the NCAA Championship with his ninth-place individual finish in the region.
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