THE SCHEDULE                 Seattle Pacific at Western Washington Classic
                                                Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019
                                                Women's 6K, 10:00 a.m.     Men's 10K, 11:00 a.m.
                                                Sudden Valley Golf Course / Bellingham, Wash.
                                                No live results or live Webcast
 
 
        Weekly release (PDF)

SEATTLE – As was the case two weeks ago, a regular-season cross country meet will take on a bit of championship atmosphere.
 
Then, it was Sacramento. Now, it will be in Bellingham.
 
The Seattle Pacific Falcons will run in their final postseason tune-up when they venture north on Saturday morning for the 46^th annual Western Washington Classic. Racing at Sudden Valley Golf Course starts with the women's 6-kilometer at 10:00 a.m. The men will follow at 11:00 with their 10K run.
 
Of the 11 Great Northwest Athletic Conference programs, nine are scheduled to compete. In addition to national No. 7-ranked SPU, the women's meet will include No. 15 Alaska Anchorage and No. 18 Western Washington. Also coming up is No. 4-ranked Chico State. Others scheduled to be in the meet are the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria, which were fourth and sixth, respectively, at last year's Canadian collegiate nationals.
 
Seattle Pacific's men will get to test their longer-distance mettle against Chico State (No. 3 nationally), along with regionally ranked Anchorage (No. 8), and Western Washington (No. 9).
 
KEEPING TRACK OF THE ACTION
The meet will not have live results or a live Webcast. Results will be posted at www.spufalcons.com and www.wwuvikings.com as soon as possible after the conclusion of the meet.
 
MAYBE DRY, MAYBE (A BIT) WET
Chances are that runners and fans will be able to stay dry if the forecast holds true. The outlook is for mostly cloudy skies and temperatures moving toward the lower 50s.
 
Some rain showers are possible, but those are not expected until later in the day after racing has been completed.
  WHAT A VIEW
This the second year the WWU Classic has been at Sudden Valley, and it is definitely a fan-friendly course. The race will be visible from multiple locations,
 
For the runners, it is flatter than Lake Padden, and is said to be similar to the courses (Amend Park in Billings, Mont., and Ash Creek Preserve in Monmouth, Ore.) on which the GNAC Championships and the NCAA Division II West Regionals take place on a rotating basis.
 
In a nutshell, the men will run four loops of 2,500 meters; the women will run three loops of 2,000 meters.

Click on the photo at right for a closer look at the course.
 
GETTING THERE
Heading north on Interstate 5, take Exit 240 toward Alger, and turn right on Lake Samish Road. Follow it for approximately 4½ miles (the name changes to Alger Cain Lake Road). Take a slight left onto Lake Whatcom Boulevard, and follow it for 2½ miles, at which point you will make a right turn to stay on Lake Whatcom Boulevard for another three-quarters of a mile.
 
Then, turn right onto Marigold Drive for a quarter of a mile, and finally, turn left into Clubhouse Circle. 
 
Altogether, it is approximately eight miles and 20 minutes east of Interstate 5.

Click on this link for complete driving directions as if leaving from SPU.
 




SO WHAT'S THE STORY THIS WEEK?
-- This will mark the 31^st time that the Falcons have run in the Classic.
-- They have competed here more than in any other meet. The next closest is 27 times in the Emerald City Open, although their last appearance there was in 2014.
-- Last fall, the SPU women placed fourth out of 12 teams with 96 points. Club Northwest won with 55.
-- SPU put four scorers among the top 25 in last year's Classic, with Kaylee Mitchell 6^th in 22:01, with Katherine Walter 19^th (22:27), Dania Holmberg 22^nd (22:35), and Kate Lilly 25^th (22:38). Emmanuellah Chelimo of Alaska Anchorage won in 21:15.
-- Seattle Pacific's women won the meet four years in a row from 1978-81 and have seven team titles altogether in Bellingham. The last of those was in 2007 with 25 points.
-- Their best score here was their winning tally of 20 points in 2005.
-- They have placed second on seven occasions, most recently behind Western Washington in 2008.
-- Seattle Pacific has had six individual women's winners. The most recent one was Jessica Pixler in 2007 with a time of 21:56.6 at Lake Padden Park.
-- The best individual time for the Falcons at the Classic was Sarah Macdonald's 21:46.0 in 2017 at Lake Padden.
-- SPU's men were seventh among 15 teams in the 2018 Classic, totaling 203 points. That put them fifth among the seven GNAC teams. Simon Fraser won with 40 points.
-- Colin Boutin, then a sophomore, was first into the chute for Seattle Pacific, taking 38^th in 33 minutes, 38 seconds. Brayden Schultz, a freshman, had his best race of the year, running No. 2 for the team and 42^nd overall in 33:42.
-- The SPU men have one Classic team title, that coming in 2004. They followed that by winning the GNAC championship and earning a trip to the NCAAs.
-- The men's score of 46 points in '04 is tied for their best in this meet. They also had 46 the following year, finishing second to host Western Washington.
-- No SPU man has won this race. The best finish was second place by Nathanael Castle in 2002. His time that year of 31:57 remains a school record for this meet at the 10K distance.
 
SCOUTING THE WESTERN WASHINGTON CLASSIC
No doubt about it: The Seattle Pacific women had quite a day for themselves at the Capital Cross Challenge in Sacramento two weeks ago. The Falcons were one of eight nationally ranked NCAA Division II teams (and one of 19 from D2 overall), totaling 322 runners, on the same 6-kilometer Arcade Creek Golf Course layout that will host the nationals in November.
 
SPU finished eighth overall out of the 40 teams in the race with 261 points. That was third among those 19 from D2, and three of its runners were in the top 25. Kaylee Mitchell won, Kate Lilly was 12^th, and Dania Holmberg 24^th. And all three were in front of Chico State's No. 1 runner, senior Tara Swangler.
 
But the Wildcats then had their entire seven-woman team, plus an eighth runner, ahead of the next Falcons finisher. That was enough to give Chico the lower score and higher place in the standings.
 
 

While Mitchell is taking this week off. Lilly and Holmberg will be on the course and looking to stay as far forward as possible. The other focus for the Falcons is to narrow the 57-second gap between Holmberg and the rest of the Falcons, and to break up that Chico pack, at least a little. Senior Katherine Walter and redshirt freshman Kelsey Washenberger will be out to lead that charge, as they were the Nos. 4 and 5 team placer in Sacramento.
 
Saturday will be the first time this fall the Falcons get to race against Western Washington. On the same weekend Seattle Pacific was in Sacramento, the Vikings were in St. Paul at the Roy Griak Invitational, another national-caliber meet. And they ran like a national-caliber team, placing fourth among 32. WWU's entire seven-runner squad was within 50 seconds (23:07 to 23:57 for 6K) and 36 places (16^th to 52^nd).
 
The Falcon men come to Sudden Valley with one of their most promising groups ever. They already have won the PLU Invitational on Sept. 21, and were third at last week's John Payne / Curtis Invitational.

 

Colby Otero was the frontrunner at PLU, finishing third overall. Then at the Payne / Curtis, juniors Elius Graff and Colin Boutin and redshirt freshman Jared Putney came across the line one right after the other in 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st. In both meets, the five scorers have stuck fairly close together – 52 seconds the first time, 58 seconds last time.
 
One of the goals for the Falcons is to finish in the top half of the standings at GNAC later this month. At Payne / Curtis, they beat Central Washington and Saint Martin's. They'll see them again this week, along with Anchorage, Fairbanks, Western Washington, Simon Fraser, Northwest Nazarene, and Western Oregon.
 
COACH CHRIS REED SAYS …
 

(On the women's meet)
"It's really good competition, and we're excited about  It's definitely going to prepare us for the conference championship, the regional championship, and beyond. We couldn't have asked for a better competition at this time of the year."
 
(On the men's meet)
"For a lot of them, it's their first 10K, but they're prepared for it, and they've been training hard. Their bodies are ready for it, and as long as they can commit to the mental side of it, they'll do really well. We haven't had a heavy training week (coming off last week's John Payne / Curtis Invitational), so they should be pretty prepared to go back-to-back weekends."
 
THE LONGER THE BETTER FOR BOUTIN
Colin Boutin most certainly knows his way around a 10K.
 
 

The SPU junior has been shining at that distance from the time he ran his first one in the spring of 2018. That one was on Bellingham's Civic Stadium oval, and the then-freshman won it at the Ralph Vernacchia Invitational track and field meet. A few weeks later, Boutin scored in the 10,000 at the GNAC Championships, placing eighth.
 
Last October, he ran his first cross country race at that distance, and was the first Falcon finisher on this same Sudden Valley course at the WWU Classic, clocking 33 minutes, 38 seconds flat. In November, he was the team's front runner at the NCAA West Regionals in Billings, Montana another 10K race, dropping all the way to 32:35.88
 
This past May, Boutin was fifth in the GNAC outdoor in 32 minutes, 28,66 seconds – a jump of three places and a drop of 19 seconds.
 
As is usually the case, this will be the first 10K for a number of the men – six, to be precise (five freshmen plus redshirt freshman Jared Putney).
 
Last year, it was four 10K first-timers. Of those, three went on to run West Regionals (always a 10K), and all three improved their times.
 
DOUBLING UP ON PRs
Setting 6-kilometer personal-bests in the season-opening PLU Invitational apparently wasn't good enough – or fast enough – for Kaylee Mitchell, Kate Lilly, and Dania Holmberg.
 
One week later at the Capital Cross Challenge in Sacramento, all three went and PR'd again.
 
Mitchell went the distance in 20 minutes, 30.2 seconds – the first sub-21 of her career. She had gone 21:04.40 at PLU, and her best time before that was 21:35.20 at last year's GNACs.
 
Lilly clocked 21:02.10 at Sac. At Pacific Lutheran, she had gone 21:32.00, topping her previous best of 21:34.11 at the 2018 West Regionals Billings.
 
Holmberg recoded her first time in the 21s at Capital, coming across in 21:17.6. Her PLU time was 22:04.40, and her old best coming into 2019 was 22:10.40 at the 2018 GNACs.
 
POLLING PLACE
Since most of the top-caliber teams had competed either in Sacramento or St. Paul (Roy Griak Invitational), they took last week off from competition – and that meant no changes in the top10 of this week's national rankings as released by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
 
The Seattle Pacific women retained their No. 7 position. Adams State of Colorado is still No. 1, and Chico State stayed at No. 4. Alaska Anchorage is No. 15 and Western Washington is No. 18.
 
Likewise, the West Region top 10 did not move at all. Chico is still on top, and SPU is No.2.
 
AROUND THE GNAC
Click on this link for news, notes, and results from around the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.
 
UP NEXT
The championship portion of the season begins in two weeks when the Falcons fly off to Billings for the GNAC meet. The races will take place at Amend Park, which twice has hosted West Regionals. The women's 6K starts at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time, and the men's 8K follows one hour later at 11:00.