Wake Forest Athletics
Season Preview
7/20/2001 12:00:00 AM | Women's Cross Country
July 20, 2001
Those familiar with the Wake Forest women's cross country program might expect head coach Annie Schweitzer Bennett to have to face a rebuilding year after losing the top two runners from last year's team that finished third at the ACC Championships and 29th at the NCAA Championships. Without a single senior on this year's roster, the Demon Deacons will definitely be a youthful squad.
"I consider this to be a rebuilding year, but I do not see any reason that we cannot achieve the success we experienced last year," said Bennett. "We want to finish in the top three of our conference again and we want to return to the NCAA Championships. We will have four returnees from last year's squad that placed 29th at the NCAA Championships. The graduation of Sara Day and Kathleen Kuhnert will be felt. We knew going into each race last season that Sara (Day) would place in the top five, which kept our team score low. Low point score wins in our sport."
With the loss of last year's team leader, Bennett hopes that someone will take over as the team leader.
"Those returning are aware of the holes in our squad due to graduation," said Bennett. "We have spoken to the fact that we need someone to step up and be our front-runner for this year. They came through last year at regionals when they needed to and this year I feel they will step up to the challenge again. We do not have any seniors on our squad so the underclassmen must be ready."
At a University known for its tough academic standards, the members of the Wake Forest cross country team are in for a tough semester out of the classroom as well.
"Our schedule will be difficult," said Bennett. "We will face Georgetown and North Carolina (Georgetown placed fifth at the 2000 NCAA Cross Country Championship and North Carolina took 12th) at our home meet Sept. 15. We beat UNC by one point last year. They will be gunning for us as always. We have invited these teams so our young team can face reality early and see the areas we will need to improve on to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves for the season.
"We will also participate in the Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota and Pre-nationals in Greenville, SC," Bennett continued. "We will face 30 teams at Minnesota and another 30 at Pre-Nationals. The reason these meets are so important is because it will help us obtain points that we can use later in an at-large selection process if we do not receive an automatic bid. There are only two automatic bids that come from our region."
It will be up to the Deacs whether or not they receive one of the automatic bids to the National Championships and that is what they will be striding towards.
