TEMPE, Ariz. - The Arizona State men and women cross country team enter the NCAA Regional Championships in Seattle, Wash. with their hopes of an NCAA Championships appearance on the line this Friday, Nov. 13.
While making the final and biggest meet of the season is always the goal, head coach Louie Quintana wants to see a strong performance from top to bottom from both teams.
"Our region is deep and we know what we have to do," Quintana said. "We just want to finish on a good note and have good momentum going into the track season."
One one hand, the path to making the NCAA Championship meet in Louisville, Kent. is simple -- finish in the top-two spots and you earn an automatic bid. The Sun Devil men will race against five teams ranked in the national top-25, while the women face four among the top 12 in the nation.
At the Pac-12 Championships, the men's team came out of the gates strong in the 8K event, with junior Bernie Montoya, redshirt senior Ryan Herson and redshirt junior C.J. Albertson towards the front. By the end, Albertson pulled away to finish in the top-20. If Montoya and Herson run with Albertson and they can finish the 10k regional event together, Quintana believes the team has a chance to qualify.
"Well obvioulsy the expectation is to make the national meet," he said. "The things we've talked about all year still remain true. It's hard for the men looking from the outside unless you're in the trenches with this group on a day-to-day basis. These guys continue to believe even if there's no factual reason to believe. Our guys still believe they can make the meet. Ultimately what would make me the most happy as a coach is if we get a guy to the meet that can individually qualify, but then we also leave the course saying, 'Boy, we really put it together. We finally ran the race we thought we could have.'"
On the women's side, there are outlying factors that could affect the chances of the Sun Devils making the championships. Like the men, a top-two finish in the 6k event would alleviate all those scenarios. Currently, the ASU women are the No. 29 spot of the 31 teams that make it according to the Kolas Calculator on Flotrack.com.
Freshman Samantha Ortega continues to impress in her rookie season, with senior Adriana Olivas, junior Chelsey Totten and junior Jenna Maack right on her heels as they were at the Pac-12 Preview. Redshirt senior Shaina Corbin and senior Cristina Juan Torres want to finish their final cross country season on the right foot, and doing so will require their best performance of the year.
"For the women, we really do have an outside to make the National Championships," Quintana said. "That would be a really exciting moment for our group to get back to the meet. Especially considering we lost arguably the greatest runner in ASU history with Shelby Houlihan, and that our women have been able to put it together and be just as good as we were last year without her.
"But if we can get multiple people to the meet, that would be an awesome end to the season."
Individual qualifying is also a possiblity for the men and women, with 38 additional individuals per gender being selected to compete at the NCAA Championships. If ASU does not qualify as a team, a Sun Devil must finish within the top 25 of the region, as four will be selected from that grouping who is not a part of a qualifying team.
The women will begin the race day on Friday at Jefferson Park Golf Course at 12:00 p.m. PST, while the men start at 1:00 p.m. PST. The last time the meet was held at Jefferson Park in 2012, Shelby Houlihan finished in fourth as a sophomore.
"It's going to be windy, it's going to be muddy, it's going to be rainy, I mean it is cross country," Quintana said.
The course is a 2k loop along flat fairways with some cart path crossings. You can find more information about the course and the meet on the main homepage here.
LAST YEAR AT REGIONALS
Shelby Houlihan held off Boise State’s Emma Bates, and her Pac-12 foes Elise Cranny from Stanford and California’s Bethan Knights to win the race in 19:31.6. Olivas also qualified for nationals last year, finishing in 20th with a time of 20:48.3. As a team the No. 24 Sun Devil women finished in eighth with 215 points.
In the men’s race, Herson and Albertson each earned All-Region honors as they finished in eighth and 25th, respectively, with times of 29:46.4 and 30:03.4. Herson became ASU’s first male competitor at the national meet since 2010. As a team, ASU finished in sixth with 155 points, with scores from Montoya finishing in 30th at 30:08.7, then-redshirt junior Ryan Norton in 41st at 30:18.3, and then-redshirt junior Daniel Wong in 51st at 30:28.5.