The MSU women’s cross country team opened their season on Sept. 2, at the Jeff Drenth Memorial at Central Michigan University. The Spartans won the meet with 23 points, and are back on track to chase their second national championship in three years.
Redshirt-sophomore Allison Lunau came in second place, running a time of 17:51.38 in the 5k race. Following behind Lunau in third place was sophomore Nicole Kowalchick with a time of 17:53.51. Sophomores Jenny Rogers, Jessica Goethals and Lauren Jenkins were other contributors to the MSU win with top 10 finishes.
“I think the whole group of freshmen from last year will be appreciably better,” head coach Walt Drenth said. “We went to camp, but we haven’t done a lot to really see who’s going to separate. Annie Fuller had an outstanding summer, she finished fifth at the USA Outdoor Junior Championships ... I think that ultimately she can be good. Karrigan Smith, Amber Way, Lynsie Gram, Jeralyn Poe, Kenzie Weiler — that’s a pretty big group of people who are competitive.”
On Aug. 29, The U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association ranked MSU No. 1 in the Great Lakes Region for the third time since 2012, after the team finished in 13th place in the NCAA championships in 2015.
For the national preseason ranking, MSU is ranked No. 10 after losing fifth-year senior Lindsay Clark and redshirt-junior Rachele Schulist to injuries, a slight improvement after finishing 12th in the NCAA championships in 2015. MSU still made a postseason run by placing third at the Big Ten championship, third at the Great Lakes regional qualifier and having Alexis Wiersma named an All-American by finishing 21st in nationals.
“You have to manage and control things you can control,” Drenth said. “We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what everybody else is doing or how we rank or any of those sorts of things. ... Once we get started, we don’t talk about outcomes of competition, but we talk about how we have to behave to be at our best.”
Last season Wiersma, Gram, fifth-year senior Katie Landwehr, redshirt-junior Shelby Jackson, redshirt-sophomore Aubrey Wilberding and sophomores Kelsie Schwartz and Way all represented MSU at the NCAA Championships. All of them returned this season, in addition to a healthy Schulist, a 2014 All-American. Drenth said he is very confident in the abilities of his athletes as long as they trust the process and work together.
“For our upperclassmen, I think the first thing we expect is leadership,” Drenth said. “Most of it is not verbal, it’s work and enthusiasm, good decisions and races, all things that are necessary to be successful. I also think Alexis (Wiersma), now Rachele’s back, and Shelby (Jackson), they had success, I expect them to do really well and have a really good final year in terms of competitiveness.”
In 2014, Schulist finished third at the Big Ten championship and second at the Great Lakes regional qualifier. She secured her All-American bid by placing fourth overall at nationals, running 19:54.30 to lead the Spartans to the program’s first-ever NCAA national team title. Schulist’s performance is the highest place at the NCAA championship in MSU history.
“(Schulist) has high expectations,” Drenth said. “We’d like her to be back at All-American status, we’d like to see her at her best. I think she’s learned a lot from the injury, kind of going through the process of being really successful. She’s grown a lot, she’s a better leader. ... Missing a year has created a sort of sense in her mind of really enjoying and immersing herself in it. She appreciates it more.”
The MSU women’s cross country team will continue their season on Sept. 16 in East Lansing at the Auto Owners Spartan Invitational.
