The Plattsburgh State men’s and women’s cross-country teams will look to build off of their strong performances over the past weekend.
The men’s team finished fourth overall and the women’s team finished third overall in the only home meet of the season.
Head coach Andrew Krug was particularly impressed with the performances of junior Jason Flach who finished fifteenth with a time of 16:32.1 and freshman Lindsey Davenport who finished sixteenth at 19:55.7 in her first ever college race.
“They both ran from the number two spots and stepped up when we were missing some people and I think they definitely impacted our overall team score and performance,” Krug said. “It was great to see them run so well in front of the home crowd and hopefully it’s a sign of good things to come.”
Flach believes that he ran the race on Saturday well because it was on the home course and the home crowd got him pumped up and excited to run.
He said he was especially happy to see all of the other sports teams from Plattsburgh come and show their support for the home runners.
Davenport said she thinks that the coach was impressed with her because it was her first college race and her performance showed she has adjusted well to college level training.
Krug believes the next race, which is Saturday, Sept 13, will be a successful one because some of the runners are very familiar with the course in Saratoga and some are from the area.
Krug also mentioned that not having two of his male runners in the previous race made a difference in the team’s performance but now that those runners are back he expects the team to receive a boost in results.
The team will now begin to race private schools that are very good and that should bring some tough competition to the PSUC cross-country team.
“The men are going to run a 6K so it will be the first jump up and a little further distance before going to the full 8K in a couple of weeks,” Krug said. “The women will run a 5K on a course that, again, a lot of them are familiar with.”
Flach said he hopes to run the same way in the next race, keeping the consistency.
In her first college race, Davenport raced to a personal record, posting a solid time of 19:55.7, but she said she is confident that she can take time off of that number to set a new personal best.
Davenport said she is a little anxious about the 6K races to come for the women because she has never participated in more than a 5K and she knows she’ll need to work on her pace to finish where she wants.
Davenport said she believes that running with a group helped her and the team to move faster and keep pace with some of the tougher opponents that they faced over the weekend.
