TodayShip women ready for national championships
Spence, Dell and Huber all part of powerful Red Raider team.
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Article RatingThe Shippensburg University women’s cross country team, ranked No. 6 in Division II, is preparing for this weekend’s 2008 NCAA Division II Cross Country Championships from Cooper’s Lake Campground in Slippery Rock.
On Saturday, the Lady Raiders will be looking for their highest national tournament finish in school history when they return to the same course where they won the Atlantic Regional Championship just two weeks ago. Shippensburg finished third at the 1998 National Championships, Steve Spence’s first year as head coach.
The 6,000-meter course at Cooper’s Lake begins with a large slope and then undulates and meanders through a large plot of land that holds a renaissance festival during the summer months and high school meets during the autumn months.
The familiarity with the course will certainly play to the advantage of Shippensburg, as the memories of two weeks ago will be fresh to the competitors.
“We know the tangents to take, and that helps us to have the mental picture of the course,” said Shippensburg head coach Steve Spence.
Perhaps the most intriguing element to this weekend’s race will be the weather that is forecast for the greater Pittsburgh area. Snow showers are scheduled during the week for Slippery Rock, while temperatures are not expected to climb above freezing.
Saturday’s forecast still projects partly sunny skies, but the temperature will hover around 30 degrees with winds whipping at about 10 miles per hour.
“The weather will definitely work to our advantage with us already being from the northeast,” Spence said. “The wind, however, could keep the groups together and prevent a breakaway.”
Individually, Atlantic Region Champion and Athlete of the Year Neely Spence (Shippensburg) is one of the favorites to win the race, but she will face stiff competition from a host of gifted runners from across the country.
Among the challengers up top will be defending champion Jessica Pixler of Seattle Pacific, who set a course record and finished more than 30 seconds ahead of the field in winning her second straight West Region title at UC San Diego just two weeks ago. She also finished sixth in a field of 278 runners at the 2008 Stanford Invitational and won the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) individual title.
Another former Division II champion, Harding’s Esther Komen, will be in Saturday’s field along with University Of Colorado at Colorado Springs’ Shannon Payne, Wayne State’s Rachel Malette, and Seattle Pacific’s Winrose Karunde.
Despite the wide array of talent near the top, Spence is still expected to post a strong finish at a venue in which she holds the current course record.
“I expect Neely to be competing near the front and sticking her nose in there,” Steve Spence said.”
Neely is by no means the only Lady Raider expected near the top of the results on Saturday. Redshirt sophomore Mary Dell (Boiling Springs), competing in her first full season of cross country after making the transition from sprinter to mid-distance runner as the PSAC Rookie of the Year in 2007, will look to build off her 10th-place All-American finish at the regional championships two weeks ago.
Sophomore Abby Huber (Cumberland Valley) should be right there with Dell, solidifying the front of the Lady Raider pack.
Redshirt freshman Katie Frey narrowly missed an All-American award at the regional meet with a 16th-place finish but will be vying to earn the national mark this weekend. Other runners include Lindsey Hollenshead Sarah Strayer and senior Samantha Jones.
