Finishing fast
SMU cross country team runs away with final C-USA championship
Posted on 10/31/2012 by PonyFans.com
SMU senior Mary Allenbratt finished second overall to lead the Mustangs to their fourth Conference USA cross country title in the last five years (photo by SMU athletics).
Ask a coach in any sport what attribute is most beneficial after pure talent (or, in some sports, size), and the answer often will be “experience.”

SMU cross country coach Cathy Casey did not have that advantage when she took her team to Hattiesburg, Miss., for the 2012 Conference USA cross country championship, but also didn’t need it, as her young team ran away from the pack to claim the title in SMU’s last season as a member of C-USA.

“I think this group is a group of great racers,” Casey said. “They really love competition, they love every aspect of it, and it was very important for them to win this last one for SMU.”

The title was SMU’s fourth in the last five seasons, and Casey mirrored her team’s success, claiming her fourth Conference USA Coach of the Year award in five years.

The Mustangs won the championship with 38 points, easily out-distancing rival Tulsa, which finished with 57. (Cross country championships are awarded to teams with the lowest score.) East Carolina finished third, with 123.

“Last year, we only beat Tulsa (for the C-USA title) by two points,” Casey said. “We know they always have a good team, so to do what we wanted to do, we concentrated on the hills in the last half of the race.”

What made the Ponies’ performance more remarkable was the fact that they won the title in the first season after the graduation of three longtime standouts: Silje Fjørtoft, Kristine Eikrem-Engeset and Monika Kørra. Senior Mary Alenbratt led the Mustangs, finishing second individually, and was joined in the scoring column by three freshmen — Freshman of the Meet Ashlee Powers, who finished second among SMU runners, Karoline Skattabue (third for SMU) and Shanoah Souza (fourth) — and junior Caitlin Keen. (Each team has seven runners in the championship meet; the top five for each team count in the scoring.)

“We lost three studs (from the 2011 team),” Casey said. “In the past few few years, we have had a good rivalry with Tulsa, Rice, ECU and UTEP — all of those schools have been pretty solid rivals. But Rice graduated a lot and we graduated a lot. Tulsa only lost one or two girls and had a lot returning from last year, we had a lot of freshmen. But right from the start, our freshmen were not afraid of anybody. They have really elevated their performances since they have been at SMU.

“There is a mental games sometimes with freshmen as they get out there, because college is different from high school. But the freshmen we have came from strong programs. Karoline Skattaboe has run in the World Junior Championships, and the two California freshmen (Powers and Souza) have been to NXN (Nike Cross Nationals), so when they came in, they already knew what it takes to run against top competition.”

SMU coach Cathy Casey was named Conference USA Cross Country Coach of the Year for the fourth time in five years (photo by SMU athletics).
Like any successful team, the Mustangs are competitive athletes, Casey said, but the fact that SMU will be joining the Big East in 2013 provided extra incentive for the Mustangs.

“Having Mary and Caitlin on this team has been huge for us,” Casey said. “They have been our leaders this season, and they explained to the other girls how important it is to win, that this was our last chance to win Conference USA for SMU.”

Cross country is run on courses that are either four, five or six kilometers long. Casey said the 2012 Mustangs trained for much of the season with postseason competition in mind.

“The conference championship is a 5K course, and NCAAs are 6K,” Casey said. “We have been training specifically to get stronger this year, because if you get stronger, you can always drop down (in distance). So we worked on hills a lot this season, and we were excited to run this course, because we were prepared to run it. We focused more this season on strength — that ultimately is what it’s going to take to win at a meet like this, and it worked.”

Casey said she was confident in her team before the championship started, but while she expected a strong performance from her team, she acknowledged that even she could not have predicted three of her runners would establish new personal records in the conference’s ultimate meet.

“Caitlin Keen set a 20-second PR, Shanoah Souza set a 10-second PR and Mary Allenbratt broke her PR by about 18 seconds,” Casey said. “Conference is one of those special competitions where you forget about everything, and just race and let go, and you want it really bad for your school and your team.

“When you race like that, it comes through. That was their decision – they wanted it really bad, and it showed.”

The Mustangs will run next in the NCAA South Central Regional Championships Nov. 9 in Fayetteville, Ark. The top two teams will qualify for the NCAA Championships in Louisville, Ky., and the top four runners from the other competing teams will qualify as individual competitors.

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