THE SCHEDULE: Seattle Pacific at NCAA West Region Championships
Saturday, November 7
Golden Gate Park/San Francisco
Women (6K), 9 a.m. Men (10K), 10 a.m.
West Regionals on the Web
Weekly relese, with stats (PDF)
SEATTLE – They've seen their opposition. They've seen the rankings. Some of them have even seen the course.
Now, the Seattle Pacific women get to see where they stand when everyone puts their best cross country runners in the same place at the same time.
Come Saturday morning at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the Falcons will toe the line with rivals Alaska Anchorage, Western Washington, Chico State, and 21 other teams for the NCAA Division II West Regional championships.
The starting gun for the 6-kilometer race goes off at 9 a.m. That will be followed at 10 a.m. by the 10K men's race, in which SPU senior Chad Meis (Renton, Wash./Seattle Christian HS) will take one final run at qualifying for the NCAA championships.
The NCAAs will, in fact, be on everyone's mind Saturday. On the women's side, the top four teams will earn a trip to Evansville, Ind., for the nationals, which are set for Saturday, Nov. 21. In the men's race, Meis will have to finish either in the top five overall, or be one of the top two finishers from outside of the three qualifying teams to grab a ticket to Indiana.
Falcon senior Jessica Pixler (Sammamish, Wash./Eastlake HS) will be seeking an unprecedented fourth straight regional championship. That would come on the heels of her winning a fourth consecutive Great Northwest Athletic Conference crown on Oct. 24 in Yakima.
On the subject of good things coming in fours, the SPU women are out to earn their fourth trip in a row to NCAAs. Their past two national trips have ended with trophies: second place in 2007 and fourth in 2008.
SPEAKING OF THE FALCONS
Coach Erika Dalgicon isn't the least bit apprehensive about having so many national-caliber teams in the field for Saturday's regionals.
“It's definitely going to be a power-packed performance,” she said. “The one way we can look at it is if everything goes as it has been, we'll know our competition if we do qualify for NCAAs. It will be familiar territory.”
The Falcons are taking a pragmatic approach to the meet.
“The bottom line is to take care of business for qualifying,” Daligcon said. “It would be great to finish high up there for confidence -- and if they all have a terrific race, I do think that's possible. We don't want to settle (for any position), but we do need to be realistic at the same time. Everyone is feeling great. They're ready to get in there and go after some familiar colors.”
Daligcon also said Meis has a realistic shot of snaring a qualifying spot in the men's race.
“Chad just has to go for it, and that's just his attitude this week is to go for it,” she said. “He's ready. His workouts have been going really well. He's really a good 10K runner. I think he's more ready for it this year than he was last year."
SCOUTING THE WEST REGIONALS: WOMEN
Nothing quite like having a foursome of top-10 teams racing after each other. Certainly, no other region can make that claim. But that will be the situation on Saturday for No. 2 Chico State (the defending regional champion), No. 5 Alaska Anchorage, No. 6 Seattle Pacific, and No. 10 Western Washington..
At least the region gets to send four teams to nationals, and those four clearly are the odds-on favorites to make it. Chico finished 51 points in front of the field at the California Collegiate Athletic Association championships on Oct. 24, placing four in the top 10. That same day, Anchorage (25 points), SPU (48) and Western Washington (64) were way in front at the GNAC meet, with a 50-point gap from the Vikings back to fourth-place Northwest Nazarene.
That being said, those four front-runners will need to be wary of UC San Diego and Cal Poly Pomona, the respective Nos. 5- and 6-ranked teams in the West, and the next two teams behind Chico at CCAAs. San Diego had 84 points and Pomona 91 in that meet.
One thing that seems far more certain is the individual outcome. When Jessica Pixler of the Falcons ran on this same course in the San Francisco State Invitational pre-regional meet on Oct. 9, she finished her 6 kilometers in 20 minutes, 36.4 seconds. That shattered the meet record (21:30.20, set in 2003) by nearly a full minute.
Fellow senior Jane Larson (Fall City, Wash./Cedar Park Christian HS) combined with Pixler for a 1-2 finish that day, as she outsprinted Alaska Anchorage's Ruth Keino to the wire by eight-tenths of a second. Larson's final time was 21:37.9.
The Seawolves have a shot at upending Chico for the team title. After Pixler and Larson went 1-2 in that October pre-regional meet, Anchorage had the next five runners, separated by just 31 seconds. Chico State ran in the meet that day, but not with its top group. And when the Falcons shared the course with Chico on Sept. 26 at the Stanford Invitational, SPU did not have the services of regular No. 3 Natty Plunkett (Bellevue, Wash./Newport HS), who was still out with a foot injury. Plunkett is racing on Saturday.
SCOUTING THE WEST REGIONALS: MEN
It'll be a tough task for Chad Meis, but one that is do-able: finishing high enough to qualify for NCAAs before he winds up his Falcon cross country career.
Meis ran ninth on this same course in the San Francisco State Invite on Oct. 9, finishing 10 kilometers in 25 minutes, 48 seconds. Of the eight runners ahead of him, two were competing unattached, so won't be in Saturday's race. Three others were from Alaska Anchorage.
While Meis is taking care of his own race on Saturday, he might very well be rooting for Anchorage, which comes into the meet ranked No. 4 in the region behind No. 1 Chico State, No. 2 Western Washington and No. 3 Cal Poly Pomona. But if the Seawolves were to finish in the top three and thus qualify for nationals, the three runners who finished ahead of Meis (they also finished ahead of him at GNACs) wouldn't count toward the quota of individual qualifiers.
From Meis' standpoint, Pomona is an unknown quantity, since the Broncos and Falcons weren't in any of the same invitationals this fall. Others expected to vie with the SPU senior for an individual berth are Chris Reed of Western Oregon (seventh at GNACs), Kyle Van Santen of Saint Martin's (eighth) and Barak Watson of Northwest Nazarene (10th).
FALCON RECAP
Jessica Pixler now has a full collection of GNAC cross country titles. The Seattle Pacific senior finished off a four-year sweep of the women's conference championships on Oct. 24 when she cruised to a 10-second victory at Apple Ridge Run in Yakima.
Pixler finished the 6-kilometer course in 21 minutes, 3 seconds. That was nine seconds better than her 2008 winning time on the same course.
The windy morning belonged to Pixler, but it also belonged to the Alaska Anchorage women. The Seawolves stopped Seattle Pacific's string of four straight GNAC titles. Anchorage sent five runners in a row across the finish line -- Nos. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 overall behind Pixler and Western Washington's Sarah Porter -- to total just 25 points. SPU, with Jane Larson eighth overall, was second with 48.
In the men's race, Falcon senior Chad Meis ran to an 11th place finish. His time for the 8K race as 25:47. Sophomore Nate Sleight (Bellevue, Wash./Bellevue Christian HS) was next for SPU, taking 30th overall in 27:21.
Then, as has been true for most of the season, came a tightly bunched group of four freshmen: Caleb Parker (Richland, Wash./Richland HS) 32nd, AJ Baker (AuGres, Mich) 40th, Andrew Van Ness (Bellevue, Wash./Bellevue Christian HS) 45th and Gavin Brand (Suwanee, Ga.) 52nd. That entire group, from Sleight back to Brand was separated by just 45 seconds.
MOST RECENT SPU TOP 7 – WOMEN
Oct. 24 at GNAC Championships
Apple Ridge Run/Yakima, Wash. (6K)
Seattle Pacific 2nd/9 teams, 48 points
Runner SPU place Overall Time
Jessica Pixler 1 1 21:03
Jane Larson 2 8 22:20
Natty Plunkett 3 11 22:48
Lisa Anderberg 4 13 22:57
Kate Harline 5 15 23:20
Suzie Strickler 6 18 23:42
Mary Williams 7 42 24:42
MOST RECENT SPU TOP 7 – WOMEN
Oct. 24 at GNAC Championships
Apple Ridge Run/Yakima, Wash. (8K)
Seattle Pacific 5th/9 teams, 135 points
Runner SPU place Overall Time
Chad Meis 1 11 25:47
Nate Sleight 2 30 27:21
Caleb Parker 3 32 27:27
AJ Baker 4 40 27:39
Andrew Van Ness 5 45 27:54
Gavin Brand 6 52 28:06
Will Harrison 7 53 28:08
POLLING PLACE
All of the top teams maintained their positions, both in the West Region and nationally in this week's U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association women's polls.
SPU is No. 3 in the West Region and No. 6 in this week's national rankings. The Falcons had moved up to No. 6 last week following their runner-up performance at the GNAC Championships on Oct. 24.
Chico State is No. 1 in both the West and No. 2 behind defending Division II champion Grand Valley State in the national poll. Alaska Anchorage remained No. 2 in the West and No. 5 in the nation.
The Falcons have been as high as No. 1 in the West and No. 3 nationally this season.
ON THE HONOR ROLL
-- Jessica Pixler was named the GNAC Athlete of the Week for women's cross country for two consecutive weeks during September. Pixler, who won it on Sept. 21 for her third-place performance in the Sundodger Invitational, picked up another one on Sept. 28 after running second at the Stanford Invite. Pixler now has 26 GNAC Athlete of the Week honors for her career. Of those, 12 have been for cross country. The other 14 have been for indoor and outdoor track combined.
-- By virtue of winning her fourth conference crown, Pixler earned GNAC Female Athlete of the Year honors for the fourth straight year.
UP NEXT
After Saturday's regionals, the season will be down to its final meet: the NCAA Division II Championships. The top 24 men's and women's teams and a total of 184 runners for each gender will gather at the University of Southern Indiana Cross Country Course on Saturday, Nov. 21, in Evansville. The 6K women's race starts at 10 a.m. PST, followed by the 10K men's race at 11 a.m.
AROUND THE GNAC
Click on this link for a look at results, schedules and notes from the GNAC.
