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Kangogo and BYU Women Run Away with First Place Honors
Cougar men finish sixth behind Stanford.
Oct. 20, 2003
PROVO, Utah - The BYU men and women's cross country teams finished what they came to do Saturday at the 2003 NCAA Pre National meet. The women's team ran away with first place in the women's 6K purple race and junior Kip Kangogo placed first overall in the men's 8K purple race. Kangogo, a junior from Kabarnet, Kenya not only won the meet with the fastest time, but he broke the previous course record of 24:54 set by Eastern Illinois athlete Jason Bialka in 2000. Kangogo ran a record time of 23:10, coming in only two seconds before the next finisher. "Kip had a wonderful, masterful race," men's head coach Ed Eyestone said. "He had the fastest time of the day as he ran with other Kenyans and with the lead Stanford pack. "Kip stayed with them for about the first 6K's. Then as the top Stanford runner, Ryan Hall, poured on the intensity Kip just went with him. In the last 50 meters Kip kicked and started to pull away from Ryan to win the race," Eyestone said. Overall, the No. 4 men's team placed sixth behind Stanford, Iona College, University of Michigan, Air Force Academy and Villanova University with 223 total points. "I think our expectations of where we would finish were higher going into this race," Eyestone said. "We just didn't do as well as we could have. As a team this wasn't our best performance of the year." Eyestone said the team was tired because of their relatively hard workouts this week. "Knowing this meet doesn't count for anything," Eyestone said, "we worked through this one. We would rather be in good condition for the conference meet in two weeks." However, despite the men's finish they did do what they came to do. They got a chance to race on the same course the 2003 NCAA Cross Country Championships will be held on in November.
"This is a lightning fast course," Eyestone said. "It is a golf course where they run mostly on the faraway. When there are hills they are gradual and are a nice breakup between the straight-a-ways."
Eyestone said this course is good for track runners and has good footing. Because of those reasons he predicted Kangogo would perform well after his strength in the 2003 track season. "The best part about this race is that I get to run with the best in the nation," Kangogo said. "These guys are all really good and they push me to be even better." Similar to the men, the No. 1 women's team experienced the same lightening fast course as they ran against powerhouse University of North Carolina and Notre Dame. The women dominated the race placing 13 points ahead of UNC with a total score of 86 points. Finishing first for the Cougars and second overall senior All-American Michaela Mannova ran the 6K course in 20:02. Following close behind her in 20:38 was seventh place All-American Laura Turner in her first race of the season. "Overall Pre Nationals was a positive experience," women's head coach Patrick Shane said. "We did well but we were very tired because we trained right through the race. We will have time to rest more for Nationals and we will be better when we come back again in November." In addition to the women's seeded first place win, the Cougars ran away with a first place win in the Pre Nationals Open Race. Leading the women in that race was junior Anika Busby who came in with a time of 21:23. "Today was a great day to race," Busby said. "Races like this help me to realize that we as a team have not reached our potential yet. Hopefully we will see it come November." The NCAA divided the top ranked teams into two races, the purple and the gold, so that even talent was in each race. Because of that the Cougars have yet to run against some of their biggest competition. "This was a good practice for us to come back and race Stanford," Shane said. "We will come back stronger after some minor tweaking to our training." The men and women's team will rest this next week and then head to San Diego for MWC Championships November 1. "All-in-all, Pre Nationals was a trial run," Eyestone said. "We know some things we need to work on and we will fix that and be ready for Nationals in November. |
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