After practicing all week, the women’s cross country team took 17th place in the Cardinal Sweep Stanford invitational on Saturday.

“We did decent,” said runner Jodie Leal, “but we are capable of way more, I know we’re capable of more.” Leal said the team would have placed higher up, if they hadn’t gotten stuck in the crowd of runners.

“It was a herd of girls, the course is only so wide,” said Leal, ” So we couldn’t get around all of them.”

The invitational consisted of 33 teams. The women’s team ran a distance of 6k.

Leal said the team is just starting out the season, and will improve in the upcoming meets. ” We will peak at the right time, because we are working hard,” said Leal, ” And because our coach knows what he’s doing.” Leal said the week leading up to the invitational was filled with intense preparation.

“Last week was a hard week, lots of hill work and long runs,” second year cross country runner Lara Marchini. Marchini said the team was trying to be as prepared as possible.

Team captain Erin Watcher, was confident the teams would succeed at Stanford.

Wachter said at that at the previous meet at Sacramento State everyone on the team had finished the 5k under nineteen minutes.

“It’s the first time that’s happened in a while,” said Wachter. Wachter also believed the team would be more successful at Stanford since teammate Caprice Bradshaw was made eligible.

At the meet at Sacramento State, Bradshaw ran unattached. Bradshaw came in seventh place in the race and would have bumped the team up from second to third.

“Its going make our top five a lot more solid,” said Watcher. ” We’re basically going to place higher up if she runs.”

Bradshaw said she was excited to be cleared for eligibility, “I’m going to run my hardest. My very best.” Bradshaw said that while the training was tough, she was excited to run.

“It gets tiring, waking up early, going to class right after running,” said Bradshaw, ” Still I love to run. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

“This is the real big starting weekend,” said Abbot, ” Everything up to this point was just shaking off the cobwebs.” Abbot also said that the NCAA started tallying points for cross-country teams, starting at the Stanford invitational.

Mary Wagner, a cross country runner, also believed that the Stanford invitational was a defining moment.

“We’ll be able to see what we can do against real competition at the meet,” said Wagner.

“It was a monster group of guys, and it was really hard to fight through,” said Grose. Grose said he was happy with the results, but would have liked to see the team finish in the top ten. Grose said the team was successful because of the hard work put in during the week.

Team captain Danny Carlson, said not having competitions during the week, helped the team workout harder.

“Usually we’d workout about three out of five days cause of meets,” said Carslon, “But this week we were able to get more workouts in, and work hard throughout the week.”

Throughout the week the team alternated between hard and recovery workouts. In the hard workout the team would run 10 miles in the morning and returns in the afternoon to run an additional eight miles. Recovery workouts took place in the morning, and are also 10 miles.

“Its tough, buts it’s what you gotta do to compete in Division 1,” said runner Colin Szehner.

“I think we’re pretty ready, we’ve been training well,” said Grose, ” I think well get what we want to accomplish here.” Grose said the competition would be tough.

“There’s really going to be a spark, we’ve got some high level competition,” said Grose. ” We’re just going to have to show up and race hard.”

Chris Romo, a first year runner on the team, thought the team had to work hard in order to eradicate preconceived notions about the team.

“A lot of people are overlooking us, thinking were the underdogs,” said Romo, “But we’re gonna prove them wrong by doing good”.

Romo believes that there is a huge amount of talent on the team, which is why he thought the team would succeed.

“People are going to hear about us. Yeah they’re going to hear about us..,” said Romo.

The Hornets run at the Gator Invitational in San Francisco on Saturday.

Zaki Syed can be reached at [email protected]