Bush leads Spartans to NCAA Championships

Cross country senior Nicole Bush has broken individual MSU records, won high school state titles and earned conference awards in her illustrious running career.

Yet the crowning achievement in an already overflowing trophy case — an NCAA national championship — has alluded the Wyoming, Mich., native.

Bush and the 10th-ranked Spartans women’s team will travel to Terre Haute, Ind., on Monday for the NCAA Championships, where Bush will look to best her fifth-place finish in 2007.

Bush is the pace-setter for the MSU team, boasting the fastest 6,000-meter time in MSU history, the highest individual finish at the NCAA championships of any Spartans runner and the 2008 Big Ten Cross Country Athlete of the Year award. Add in her high school accolades — three-time Michigan cross country champion and owner of the state fastest time record as a freshman — and Bush has reached nearly every pinnacle in the sport at her age.

“I think she’s kind of firmly taken her place in the history books and will go down as one of the best so far (at MSU),” director of cross country and track and field Walt Drenth said. “She’s paving the way for people after her to have to run faster.”

But this weekend, individual splits and final times will get tossed out as she strives for a first-place finish in Indiana.

“I think it would definitely be more of a placement issue than a time issue (Monday),” Bush said.

If Bush is going to take home MSU’s first individual national championship she will have to hurdle a few recurring contenders.

Texas Tech senior Sally Kipyego, a native Kenyan, has won back-to-back NCAA cross country titles, including the 2007 final in which her final time of 19 minutes, 30.9 seconds smashed the runner-up finish by 17 seconds. Colorado senior Jenny Barringer and Florida State junior Susan Kuijken, who placed second and third last season, respectively, also return for another crack at Kipyego. Bush will look to best her 2007 championship time of 20:13.4 and her sixth-place finish of 20:19.1 at October’s Pre-Nationals meet in Terre Haute, which featured much of the same competition she will face Monday.

“Anything could happen,” Bush said. “I’m not going to take the lead and go for the win right away, but I’m hoping to just have a race where I make all the decisions that are right for me.”

The senior distance runner, who also competes in 3,000-meter steeplechase for MSU track and field and almost qualified for the 2008 Olympics earlier this year, will run her final cross country race Monday.

Despite a rocky start to her running career, which included a redshirt year because of mononucleosis and a top NCAA championships finish of 101st, Bush’s final two seasons of running 60-plus miles per week have provided her a newfound outlook on the sport.

“Before, I was probably getting in my own way,” Bush said. “I don’t know what I thought I was getting out of (running) in the beginning, but it’s not what I’m getting out of it now. It’s kind of hard to describe in a few words. I guess it’s life experiences.”

Bush will pace the Spartans on Monday when they look to top last season’s fifth-place finish as a team, the second-best in school history.

“I think we’re better this year than we were last year,” Drenth said. “The competition this year is better, but last year we were fifth, so you never know.”