CROSS COUNTRY SETS SIGHTS HIGH FOR 2017 SEASON

8/30/2017 2:00:00 PM | Men's Cross Country, Women's Cross Country, Cross Country

2017 Cross Country Schedule 2017 Men's XC Roster 2017 Women's XC Roster

The 2017 cross country season is upon us so we sat down with Radford head coach Eric Thatcher to take a look at the roster, how the schedule was put together, team goals and more.

In the 2017 Big South preseason poll, the Radford men's cross country team was tabbed to finish fourth while the women's squad was projected to finish sixth.

Following a final points tally based on the voting of the league's head coaches, the Highlander men totaled 71 points including four third-place votes, trailing only High Point (73), Liberty (91) and Campbell (99) who was chosen as the favorite with nine first-place votes. Teams below Radford on the poll include Winthrop (58), UNC Asheville (49), Charleston Southern (40), Gardner-Webb (29), Longwood (20) and Presbyterian (20).

On the women's side, the Highlanders collected 52 points including three votes for fifth. Liberty (97) took home eight first-place votes to be selected as the favorite's this upcoming season with High Point (89), Campbell (83), Winthrop (65) and UNC Asheville (61) coming in behind the Flames. Rounding out the poll following Radford was Charleston Southern (30), Gardner-Webb (30), Presbyterian (26) and Longwood (17).

In 2016, the men finished third and the women placed sixth at the Big South Championships before the men made a big jump in points at the NCAA Regionals for a 22^nd-place finish.

NEWCOMERS
Five men and six women have joined the Radford cross country program this season so a large portion of Highlander runners on the results sheets will be brand new. It remains to be seen who will have an immediate impact and who will need some time to find their place in the team, but Coach Thatcher has come away impressed with several of those newcomers already.

"The incoming group did a tremendous job in their summer training and we're excited to see them running in the Radford red," Thatcher said. "On the men's side Pete, Juan and Carson have already shown that the moment isn't too big for them and they're right where they should be in training."

"On the women's side, you can tell that Annsley Eckert didn't miss a beat in her summer training so she's tremendously fit, very confident and does a great job working at appropriate effort levels," he continued. "Senior Carrie Keevey has come in to our program and been great so far. She won the Highlander Half Marathon that we hosted this past spring and we expect her to be able to mix it up pretty well."

RETURNERS
While much of the roster does consist of new faces, you can't forget about the eight men and three women that helped the Highlanders produce one of their more successful seasons in recent memory in 2016.

"Frisco Poole was our first All-Big South conference guy since 2008 so we obviously have high expectations for him going into his senior year," Thatcher noted. "Haben Zemichael, who's also a senior and Ash Kidanu, a guy who only missed all-conference honors by two spots last year, are both runners that we'd expect to see continue to improve and take that step in the right direction."

"With the women's team, Percie Lyons is in the best shape of her life so I'm really pleased with the work she put in this summer and having a freshman like Annsley to work with has given her some of the best workouts she's had here. It's clear that she's going to have high expectations going into this season. Mariah Quintero, another senior, is going to be solid for us as well. Alongside them is sophomore Olivia Hodge who did a great job of improving from running cross country her freshman year to scoring at the conference meet in track and field's steeplechase and she working extremely hard to carry some of that momentum into this fall."

GOALS/EXPECTATIONS
After last year's successes, there is no doubt that the Highlanders want to be even better in 2017. Coach Thatcher and company will continue to focus on improving themselves every day and hope that the positive results come with it.

Thatcher: "As each individual improves our team's average time will trend in the right direction. We want to stay fresh heading into the conference and regional championships so we can deliver our peak performances at that time and we'll do what we need to do to get there. Our runners need to continue to get a better understanding of our conference opponents and develop a race strategy that helps us beat expectations. I'd like to think that every team wants to outperform the expectations laid out in the preseason polls and we're no different."

SCHEDULE COMPOSITION
With four races before the Big South Championships and one after, Radford will have plenty of chances to get better and go up against top competition.

First up is Virginia Tech's Hokie Invite on Friday, Sept. 1^st.

Thatcher: "We love being able to start the year out at Virginia Tech with the Hokie Invite. The course is a shorter distance so it allows us to kind of work our way into the season with the women running a 4K and the men running a 6K. Plus it's a familiar course for our returners so it's a great way to compare your results year-over-year and see how we've improved."

Then the Highlanders head to Lynchburg for the first time in 2017 for Liberty's Big South Preview on Saturday, Sept. 16^th.

Thatcher: "Liberty has chosen to host a preview race of the conference championships and although it's taking place a little earlier in the season, even though we won't be running at our absolute peak by then, it gives us a great opportunity to see the course and give us the mentality that by the time conference championships roll around, we've been there and done that in a sense."

Next up is Queens University of Charlotte's Royals XC Challenge on Friday, Sept. 29^th.

Thatche: "While the course in Lynchburg will be really tough, I wanted to balance things out by giving our team an opportunity to try to chase their personal records. Queens down in Charlotte, N.C. provides that fast track to see where we are, in hopefully good conditions, in the middle of the season and see if the hard work we've been putting in has been paying off."

The final tune-up before conference championships is High Point's Vertcross Invitational on Friday, Oct. 13^th.

Thatcher: "We've been on the High Point course plenty of times before so it keeps the schedule even where half of the courses are new and half we've seen before. The women will actually run their 6K there so that when they tackle the 5K at conference, even on a hillier course, they'll be able to handle it. It's another course that blends some different challenges together so that our men's team can learn and overcome and be better by the time we're competing in the Big South."

And finally Radford takes its talents back to Lynchburg to compete for a conference title at the Big South Championships on Saturday, Oct. 28^th.

"We'll go into conference focused on making it our absolute best race. With our schedule having us run every other weekend, it allows us to do some great things in training during the season plus we'll have seen a lot of our conference opponents already having run against them throughout the season."

"Overall I'm really happy with how our schedule shook out. We don't have to travel too far to get to the kind of races we want to be in and it should do a great job of preparing us for the postseason."

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