Men's Cross Country battles rolling hills and competition at Shenandoah University - Kernstown Battlefield course offers many lessons

Head Coach Mark Pryor was looking for a cross-country course that would challenge his young team. After 2 months of solid training, Pryor wanted to test the fitness level of his mostly freshman comprised team. Having already run two 5k distance races, it was also time to find a race more on a coach level.  He found both in the Hornet Harrier Invitational hosted by Shenandoah University.

 

The site of Shenandoah University's home meets is the Kernstown Battlefield located in Winchester Virginia. It is comprised of 62 acres of rolling hills within Virginia's Shenandoah Valley with the spectacular natural beauty of the Valley via historic roadways, winding mountain roads, leisurely walking tours, or challenging hiking trails to spectacular overlooks. This is the historic sight of three Civil War battles from 1862 - 1864.

 

The Kernstown Battlefield course has four different measured racecourses (3k, 5k, 6k and 8k) that have served as the site for the NCAA Division III South Region XC Championships in previous years. It contained an opening quarter mile of uphill all grass terrain that led to 2,000 kilometers of rolling hills that makes any race very challenging since the runners don't have time to settle into a comfortable pace. The diversity of the scheduled competition was also appealing for Coach Pryor. The NCAA Division-III schools Washington and Lee (#16) as well as Shenandoah Univ are both nationally ranked programs in the U.S. Track & Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association National Poll.  NJCAA Region 20 member schools Hagerstown CC and Potomac State College are not located very far from Winchester and regularly travel to this meet. Also lining up was HBCU Bowie State and a Christian school nearby named Christendom College.

 

The team line up for the Cardinals included four of the athletes who have been performing consistently from the start of the season. The team's 5^th man for this meet was freshman Xavier Vallejo who only ran one year of T&F at Catonsville High School. So, this was literally Xavier's first ever college race. Missing from the team's line-up was freshmen Dallas Turner and Divino Lowe who were both resting. 

 

Coach Pryor's pre-race instructions to his team were simple. "Don't start out fast in the beginning hills and have nothing left for the finish". The 6k race distance was less than the 8k (5.0 miles) college distance but it was helpful to his young freshman still trying to adjust to the increase in distance from high school cross country. 

 

The race played out as expected with Washington and Lee runners setting the pace and occupying the first five places followed closely by the rest of the teams. After running uphill for most of the first mile, Coach Pryor didn't expect his team's split to be very fast, but they all logged sub 6:00 min mile splits.  As the athletes descended into the lower valley and flat section of the racecourse, Coach Pryor could see his athletes were fighting hard to maintain their position. 

 

Coming into the last downhill of the course which funneled into the finish line, Coach Pryor was looking for how his athletes would finish. Freshman Ohene Obiri Yeboah was the team's first finisher in 15th place. Behind him was sophomore Ronak Rami caught two other runners ahead of him to finish in 19^th place. The team's 3^rd finisher was freshman Malik Manzanera who was in 23^rd place with his classmate Elijah Walker finishing in 28^th place.  The team's first four finishers have been solid from the very first meet of the season and followed suite. Xavier Vallejo was the final team scorer to cross the line in 38th place. In cross-country, each athlete's place is how the team scores are tabulated. Thus, their individual times are not as important. But their times did provide Coach Pryor with a measurable indicator of what each athlete could run for the standard 8k (5.0 miles) distance.

 

Link to the official results:  https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/267653/results/1064647

 

Official Team Scores

The team's next scheduled meet will be Friday, October 3rd at The Paul Short Run hosted by Lehigh University in Bethlehem PA. This is a national class competition that will see over 600 colleges on all levels (NCAA Division I, II, III, NJCAA and NAIA) running in it's historical 51^st year.

 

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