The sun was shining and the morning air was crisp. It was a little chilly if you weren’t moving around, but overall it was a nice day at Lowes Creek County Park just outside of Eau Claire.

Hopefully this will be a good omen for the Blugold Cross Country Team.

The park served as the site of an Alumni/Open run for the Men’s and Women’s cross country teams. Head Coach Dan Schwamberger described the event as a warm-up for the teams’ upcoming seasons.

Women

The women, who won the National Championship last year, return five of the seven runners from that team, according to Schwamberger. One of those five is All-American Margaret Ho.

Ho gave some early season, fundamental goals of the team.

“Have consistent training, stay healthy, and stay injury free,” said Ho, who is a senior.

She added that eating right and getting a good night’s rest are important aspects of staying healthy.

The team is ranked number one overall in the most recent coach’s poll. Though this is good, Schwamberger doesn’t let it get to his player’s heads.

“I really try to de-emphasize that because it really doesn’t matter right now,” said Schwamberger who is in his fourth year as coach. “I could care less if we’re number one or number 40.”

The team cares about advancing through the conference and then doing well in Regionals and Nationals.

“I’m just trying to take it week by week and not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “Just keep building.”

He also said that he expects tough competition out of UW- Oshkosh, UW-Steven’s Point and UW-La Crosse in Conference.

Regionally, Schwamberger pointed out that Washington University (MO) and The University of Chicago (IL) will be good teams as well.
To beat these teams, the ‘Golds will need players like Ho to run well. To get back to All-American form, Ho stressed the mental aspect of the game.

“At this point, I just need to work on being patient,” said Ho. “I tend to compare this season to last season a little bit too much.”

Men

The men’s team was able to race to 16th place last year at nationals. Schwamberger said that this year’s team got together and decided that they could do even better.

“They want to finish top 10 at Nationals,” said Schwamberger. “I think that it’s a very lofty goal, but I think that if things fall into place, I think we can do it.”

Captain Thomas Breitbach applies this same confidence to himself. He feels that he can be a top 10 runner at Nationals this year after finishing 119th last year.

His success running the 10K in Track and Field this past semester is the source for his confidence.

“…last spring really got me thinking big for this season,” he said.

Schwamberger said that in Cross Country, what you do at the end of a season is far more important than what you do at the beginning of the season.

The early meets do serve a purpose though.

“What we’re really looking for in these first few meets is that they are good workouts,” Schwamberger said.

These early season meets will be much needed to be able to run with what Schwamberger describes as the strongest region in the country.

The number one ranked team in the nation is regional opponent Washington University (MO). UW-Platteville and UW-La Crosse are also in the top 10.

A good conference standing will be key to regional success as well according to Schwamberger.

“If we can be in the top four, that sets us up really nice heading in to regionals,” said Schwamberger.