Track/Cross Country Story

2003
NMJC CROSS COUNTRY
HARRIER REPORT #5

MEET: NMHU CROSS COUNTRY JAMBOREE, LAS VEGAS, NM
DATE: Saturday, September 27, 2003
DISTANCE: 5K
CONDITIONS: Clear and 68, no wind
THE COURSE: Dirt cart path, mostly flat with slight inclines and one major hill of about 300 meters right before the first mile.
TEAMS PARTICIPATING AND SCORES: 1) South Plains College – 33; 2) New Mexico Highlands University – 41; 3) NMJC – 87; 4) Eastern New Mexico University – 89; 5) Southwestern Poly Tech Institute – 107; 6) West Texas A&M University – 154; 7) DINE College – 189.

COACH’S COMMENTS:
This team continues to impress me! We have now competed in four meets and have improved every week! This is how it is supposed to work. We are supposed to improve every week; yet it hasn’t always been the case in the past. With improvement comes confidence, and our confidence is growing! The young ladies can see that their long runs and hard workouts are paying off.

Going into this meet I was hoping to accomplish two things: 1) be more competitive with SPC and NMHU; and, 2) beat ENMU, especially since we beat them in our first meet and they beat us at UNM. The team accomplished both of these goals. We were actually in the race and competitive with SPC and NMHU. We may never beat SPC, but we will continue to improve and get as close as we can. (SPC has two great foreign women, one being the returning National CC champion from 2002.) I was a little worried about the altitude, but NMHU designed a course which allowed us to handle the near 7,000 feet without it being much of a factor.

Our next meet is in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This is one of the largest cross country meets in the nation and one that our team has been looking forward to all season. The OSU meet will have two divisions for both men and women. Each will have a University division, which will host some of the best teams in the nation, and a Junior College division. We will have a chance to see how we fair against all of the Kansas junior colleges. Kansas schools traditionally are some of the best two year cross country schools in the nation. We will also get to compete against a lot of NAIA schools.

NMJC RUNNERS, PLACES AND TIMES:
7th Jasmine Sanchez 20:21
16th Amanda Montes 21:22
19th Becky Zubiate 21:37
22nd Rita Ameri 22:09
23rd Vanessa Marquez 22:25
28th Ashley Dailey 24:03
31st Josephine Jaramillo 24:44

BEST PACED RACE: Amanda Montes (tied for #15 on our all time list)
BEST FINISHING KICK: Josephine Jaramillo
T-BIRD OF THE WEEK: Jasmine Sanchez for having our 1st top ten finish of the year and now for holding the #5 & #11 spots on the NMJC all time list.