THE SCHEDULE                 Seattle Pacific at Emerald City Open
                                                Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023
                                                Men's 8K, 10:30 a.m.     Women's 6K, 11:15 a.m.
                                                Lower Woodland Park / Seattle
                                                No live Webcast        No live results
 
 
SEATTLE – That sure got here in a hurry.
 
Just five Saturdays after the cross country season opener in Steilacoom, the Seattle Pacific Falcons are getting ready for the regular-season finale.
 
Not only will this one be in Seattle, it'll be just about 10-plus minutes from campus when the Falcons head to Lower Woodland Park on Saturday morning for the Emerald City Open.
 
The men's 8-kilometer race starts at 10:30 a.m. The women's 6K follows at 11:15. A community 2K open race is set for noon, with a $5 entry fee for adults and kids.
 
SPU will be one of three Great Northwest Athletic Conference school at the meet. Central Washington and Western Washington also are entered, although WWU's top runners will be in Illinois at the Lewis Crossover, one of the premier national-caliber meets on the calendar every year.
 
KEEPING TRACK OF THE ACTION
The meet will not have live results or a live Webcast. Results will be posted ASAP after each race on the Club Northwest website.
 
FINDING YOUR WAY TO THE ACTION
Lower Woodland Park is not far from the Seattle Pacific campus. The easiest way to get there is to cross the Fremont Bridge and head up Fremont Avenue, which is a very long hill. Follow it all the way up to its end at N 50th Street, and turn right. After dipping under Aurora Avenue, look for a parking lot on the left side for the Woodland Park Zoo and Rose Garden. The starting line is near there.
 
Additional parking is available in the lot that runs along Green Lake Way, and in the lot next to the tennis courts, although both of those are a bit of a hike to the starting line.
 
IS THIS FALL OR SUNMMER?
The calendar says fall – after all, it'll be the first Saturday in October – but the weather for Saturday's races will feel more like the Sept. 2 opener in Steilacoom when that same calendar still said summer. The forecast calls for clear skies and temperatures pushing toward the mid-70s. It won't be that hot for the races  but runners should expect mid- to upper 60s. There's no rain in sight, and the wind doesn't figure to be a factor.
 
SCOUTING THE EMERALD CITY OPEN
For the Falcons, who have had the past two weeks to focus solely on training, this will be their final tune-up prior to the GNAC Championships on Oct. 21 in Anchorage.
 
Annika Esvelt has been well out in front for the Falcon women in both of the races she has run. At the Bill Roe WWU Classic two weeks ago, she was 10^th overall, fifth among the GNAC competitors (seven of the conference's schools were there) and two minutes ahead of the rest of the Falcons.
 
Matise Mulch, Anna Prussian, and Maya Ewing have worked well together for the past two meets. In Bellingham, they were within nine seconds and five places of each other at the finish line, ranging from 24:03 to 24:12 for 6 kilometers. That's even closer than what they ran at the PLU Invitational one week prior to that, when the margin was 17 seconds and eight places.
 
Brennan LeBlanc continues to lead the way for the SPU men, as he has from the get-go in September. He was 26 seconds ahead of his teammates in Bellingham.
 
But just like the women, those teammates stuck together most of the way. Silas Demmert, a freshman, is continuing to establish himself as one of the leaders of the Falcon pack, as he moved up to the No. 2 scoring slot, moving up from No. 5 on Sept. 2 and No. 3 on Sept. 16. Isaac Venable, Nathaniel Gale, and Jonathan Lieb were withing 26 seconds of each other and within 48 seconds of Demmert.

WILEY NAMED TO PAN AMERICAN GAMES TEAM
AND THE GNAC LEADER IS …
Of the 10 Great Northwest Athletic Conference schools, seven raced at the Bill Roe WWU Classic. That made it somewhat of a GNAC mini meet.
 
Keeping in mind that not all 10 teams were there (Montana State Billings and Western Oregon raced elsewhere that weekend; Northwest Nazarene did not race), Western Washington emerged as still the team to beat for both the men and the women.
 
Scoring the meet with only the GNAC competitors, the Vikings men had 37 points, with Alaska Anchorage next at 47. SPU was fifth with 135.
 
For the women, Western totaled 51 points. Saint Martin's was next with 64. The Falcons were sixth with 126.
 
NINE FALCONS MAKE THE GRADE
Led by third-time honoree Annika Esvelt on the women's side and second-timer Brennan LeBlanc on the men's, SPU placed nine runners on the Great Northwest Athletic Conference All-Academic team that was announced on Wednesday.
 
Esvelt is an applied human biology major with a 3.97 grade-point average. She has competed in two races this fall and led the Falcons in both, including a second-place finish at the PLU Invitational on Sept. 16 in Tacoma. Esvelt also has been named to the GNAC All-Academic track and field team twice.
 
LeBlanc is a computer science major with a 3.22 GPA. He has been the front runner for the Falcons in all three meets, with a pair of top-15 finishes: 11th at the Puget Sound Invitational, and 15th at PLU. He has been the first SPU runner across the finish line in six of the last seven meets, dating back to last October.
 
 

COACH ERIC HANSEN SAYS …
(On this week's focus)
"It's the last meet before the conference championships, so we want to use it to simulate what the start is going to feel like. We'll try being a little more aggressive getting out just to prepare ourselves for what GNAC is going to feel like.
 
(On practice since the last meet)
"We're starting to do some quicker stuff in practice. We're still coming along the way we need to right now."
 
AROUND THE GNAC
With this being the final regular-season weekend, all 10 schools are stepping to the starting line – and they're doing so all over the country, from the Pacific Northwest (SPU, Central Washington and a group of Western Washington runners to the Midwest.
 
The big one is the annual Lewis Crossover in Romeoville, Ill. That is a national-caliber gathering, and will include Alaska Anchorage, Saint Martin's and Western Washington.
 
Another GNAC trio will head to the San Francisco State Invitational, as Alaska Fairbanks, Simon Faser, and Western Oregon will make that trip.
 
Northwest Nazarene will be in Logan, Utah, at the Steven T. Reeder Memorial meet, while Montana State Billings stays close to home for the Yellowjacket / Battlin' Bear Open.

Click on this link for the lates news, notes, and results from around the GNAC.
 
UP NEXT
For the first time since 2001 – the very first year of the conference – the Falcons will fly off to Alaska for the GNAC Championships, set for Saturday, Oct. 21 in Kincaid Park. The women's 6,000-meter race starts at noon Pacific time, followed by the men's 8K at 1:00 p.m.