Young Group Proves Its Mettle At NCAA Pre-Nationals
Oct. 13, 2012
Women's Red Seeded 6K Results 
| Women's Black Unseeded 6K Results
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Going up against a stacked field three time zones away, a young Oregon State cross country team proved its mettle on Saturday afternoon in Louisville, Ky., finishing 25th out of 40 seeded teams at the NCAA Division I Pre-Nationals Invitational, beating a number of regionally-ranked squads from across the country in the process.
"We did really, really well," Oregon State head coach Kelly Sullivan said. "It's the first trip for this group and they were all pretty starry-eyed. It was a big, quality field and I went into it hoping that we could maybe be 20th, which was probably a pretty optimistic idea, but it was a big goal to shoot for as a team. When the dust settled, we finished 25th and beat 15 other schools, including some other schools in the second race that just didn't get into the seeded race that are pretty good. Overall it was a really good day."
Kinsey Gomez led the way for OSU at E.P. `Tom' Sawyer State Park, coming in 123rd out of 265 runners with a time of 21:46.8. Gomez was part of a group of five Beavers that stayed together the majority of the race and all finished within 40 spots of each other to give Oregon State its stellar team score.
Teresa Lawson crossed the line in 21:48.3 (125th), Sandra Martinez in 21:53.4 (140th), Kira Kelly in 21:57.9 (149th) and Kelsi Schaer in 22:02.6 (159th).
"That first five all ran right together," Sullivan said. "(Assistant Coach) Laura Harmon talked last night about Kinsey, Teresa, Kira, Sandra and Kelsi really running together and they did that. Even though there were 40 teams on the line, when the gun went off they really did find each other. It's easy to say, but it's not easy to actually do and the fact that they were able to do something having never been asked to do that in a meet like that was really encouraging."
Taylor Nowlin finished in 195th with a time of 22:30.1 and Sabrah de Voir in 219th (22:51.6) to round out Oregon State's performers in the seeded race.
Due to the size of the field, three Oregon State runners competed in the women's unseeded race. Adrienne Demaree led that group with a time of 22:52.5 (97th), followed by Morgan Anderson (23:23.2; 141st) and Haley Hunt (23:58.2; 185th).
"Outside of one individual most of them have never been to anything of this caliber," Sullivan said. "The whole objective behind this thing was a baptism by fire. I really like the way they responded. They walked off the course today wanting more. We talked about if they each ran 30 seconds faster individually we would have been 12th as a team. When they looked at it that way, they realized they can be great, and not only the next four weeks. The big goal is wherever we go this time next year, 12 months later, to walk off the course with a completely different set of results based off of this trip."
The Beavers will be back in action next Friday when they race in the Beaver Classic at home in Corvallis.
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