When Monmouth College cross country coach Roger Haynes took his
teams to the NCAA regional meet at Lake Breeze Golf Course just
outside Oshkosh, Wis., last Saturday, he knew this could be the year
the Scots returned a runner to the National Championships, what he
didn’t know was what teams would get an invitation to next week’s
meet and where that would leave his top runners.
The NCAA guarantees two teams to automatically qualify for the
national event and can add up to three more teams as at-large team
entries. The top seven individuals, not part of an advancing team
then receive berths to the meet and that’s where the Scots chances
faded.
Five men’s teams advanced, but that still left Monmouth sophomore
Clay Staley on the outside looking in, but it gave hope to freshman
Mary Kate Beyer. Unfortunately for Beyer, the women’s side did not
select their maximum five teams and Beyer missed the national meet
by two seconds, in the eighth position.
The Monmouth men finished 17th, down from 14th a year ago while
the women improved to 21st, gaining four spots from last fall. All
things considered, Haynes was happy with his teams’ overall
performance. "Our times were better than a year ago when we had a
lot of senior men," Haynes said. "All 13 kids we took ran season
bests, so it was an outstanding weekend."
Staley’s 8K time of 25:01 was good for 24th and is the
third-fastest time by a Monmouth runner at a regional meet.
Monmouth’s second finisher, classmate Brad Begyn (26:20) finished
94th. The Scots other runners were Damon Bautista 113th (26:46),
Adam Rodriguez 116th (26:48), Seth Leitner 118th (26:49), Derek
Huff, who cut nearly a minute off his best time to finish 142nd
(27:24) and Matt Peharda 150th (27:33).
While Beyers’ bid to become the first Fighting Scot woman to
advance to the national meet fell short, her 20th place overall
finish (22:19) set the school record for a 6K race. Katie Staab was
not far behind in 79th position (23:33), Amy Aghababian finished
159th (25:05), Jayme Ayers 169th (25:26), Briana Flynn 180th (25:47)
and Whitney Didier 195th (26:39).
Haynes was upbeat about his runners’ ability to compete at a
significant meet. "We tried to focus on the conference and regional
meets," he reported. "I couldn’t have been more pleased with how we
competed there. They handled the course and the situation extremely
well. It’s all I could have hoped for."
The veteran coach should be upbeat about the future, too. Only
two seniors will be lost on the men’s side
