Beavers Open at Westmoreland Quintet
August 31, 2015 | Women's Cross Country
Oregon State won't field a full squad, but it will field a competitive one when the Beavers begin their 2015 cross country season on Tuesday at the five-team Westmoreland Quintet, sponsored by Lewis & Clark College.
The meet starts at 4 p.m. and will be staged on a 5,000-meter course at Westmoreland Park in Portland. The teams will race simultaneously but the meet will be scored as three duals; OSU faces Portland State and Portland and the host Pioneers meet Pacific University.
OSU's projected entrants are redshirt juniors Morgan Anderson, Samantha Lewis, Maureen Tremblay and Kira Kelly; junior Holly Cavalluzzo; redshirt sophomore Kristiane Width, and redshirt freshman Dakota Steen.
Cavalluzzo was OSU's top runner and Anderson was the No. 3 finisher for most of the 2014 season. Tuesday's other projected entrants all redshirted. Several other Beavers will compete unattached and not factor in the team scoring.
“We will put a good group out there, small but pretty strong,” OSU coach Kelly Sullivan said. “Typically none of us race a full squad” in the opening meet of the season, “but we are excited to get out and race for the first time.”
Cavalluzzo and Anderson finished 1-3 for OSU at the 2014 Pacific-12 Conference Championships, and 2-3 at the NCAA West Regional. Cavalluzzo ran the second-fastest cross country 5K time in school history (16:55), Anderson the 12th fastest (17:27) last season; Width posted the No. 19 time (17:43) in 2013 as a true freshman.
The Beavers defeated Portland 27-29 but lost to PSU by the same score at the Viking Classic at Fairview last October.
Also, the Beavers were ranked 14th in the West Region on Monday in the U.S. Track & Field/Cross Country Coaches Association's preseason poll.
OSU's next meet will be the Washington Sundodger Invitational, scheduled for 9 a.m. Sept. 19 at Lincoln Park in Seattle.
For more information on the Oregon State cross country team, follow the team by Facebook at Facebook.com/OSUTrackCrossCountry or on Twitter at twitter.com/@beavers_track.
