With the loss of last year’s top two runners, the Ball State women’s cross country team enters the 2005 season relying on new leadership and younger runners. Coach Sue Parks says this year’s team will have a “different look.”
“Everybody has to step it up across the board,” she said.
The Cardinals lost senior Jill Scully, who redshirted her freshman year on the track and field team and has one more season of eligibility remaining for that team. Sarah Huddleston also graduated last year.
Ball State travels to Indianapolis for its first meet of the season at the Butler Open this weekend.
Picked to finish fourth in the preseason coaches poll, the team has something to prove after finishing first and second in the Mid-American Conference in 2003 and 2004, respectively. The Cardinals finished runner-up last season to Kent State by two points.
Junior Rose Lehe and senior Nicole Hartford are the top two runners this season. Lehe recorded two top-10 finishes in 2004 and finished in 16th place in the conference championships with a time of 18:52:80. Hartford also had two top-10 finishes last year. She finished fourth at The Butler Open and seventh at the Indiana University Open last year.
The team also has some new faces in freshmen Vanessa Gilbert, Allison Grissom and Sara Martin. Two of the three freshmen were recruited and are “under the wing [of older runners] but expected to contribute,” Parks said.
The rest of the team includes juniors Lindsay Moldstad and Amanda Ponsot and sophomores Helen Kibby and Katie Koehler.
Parks looks for the team to compete well throughout the season and looks forward to seeing how well they stack up in the conference.
“The team always comes first,” she said, “but individuality helps the team succeed.”
Ball State will compete in four other meets before heading to the MAC championships, which will be played host to by Northern Illinois on Oct. 29.
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