Butler
It was business as usual for the UT women’s cross country team on Oct. 24, when they defended their Sunshine State Conference (SSC) championship.
Tampa had won the previous two years.
The Spartans placed seven runners in the top ten.
They continued their conference reign with ease.
The top seven runners accumulated just 21 points with the second place team, Florida Southern, far behind at 69.
Florida Tech, who had the leading runner of the day in Sara Trane, finished out the top three teams with 71 points.
Fox
University of Tampa senior Dana Fox, who placed fourth individually, believed it was a great positive to have so many Spartans close together leading the way.
“It [felt] pretty good. We’re working more so this year than any other year on getting far in nationals as a team,” Fox said. “So to finish really close to the first [runner] and for [everyone’s time] to move up, its good.”
Coach Jarrett Slaven felt this conference championship win was a little more convincing than the previous two.
“The girls were more closely bunched, and I think they dominated it a little better than the other years,” Slaven said.
Next on the women’s cross country schedule is the Division II NCAA South Regional, where the top two schools move on the NCAA Championship.
Regional will be held on Saturday, Nov. 7 on UT’s course at Brandon Trails.
Being a senior, Fox believes she holds a definite advantage running on the home course.
“For all the seniors, we’ve been running on this course for four years,” said Fox. “We had a home meet there at the beginning of the year, we practice there on the weekends, so we kind of know it in and out.”
Sophomore Jess Butler, who placed second at the SSC championship meet for UT, also has a sense of confidence being able to run on a familiar course.
“You know every point in the course, you know where you are throughout the course, so it helps us mentally so you won’t freak out about how long it is or how it feels like forever because you know exactly where you are,” Butler explained.
Butler then told of the team’s expectations for the regional meet.
“I don’t know if we expect to get first,” Butler admitted, “But if we don’t screw up, we probably will.”
Coach Slaven added his input of the upcoming meet saying, “We’re there to win.”
The women Spartans will surely be running against many great competitors, but one who stand out in particular is the aforementioned Sara Trane.
“She’s a ‘for real runner’, is what I call her, because she is really consistent,” Slaven spoke of the Florida Tech athlete.
“If they can stay with her, even close to her, you’re assuring yourself a good placement in both regional and nationals.”
If the team performs as well as they expect to at regional, they will move on to nationals.
Though the women finished first at regional last year, they placed outside of the top ten at nationals.
Butler explains that they want to improve upon their 14th place finish of last season.
“I, like our whole team does, expect to get fourth. Not expect, but that’s our whole goal, what we’ve been aiming for this year,” Butler said.
The national meet, the Division II NCAA Championships, will be held on Saturday, Nov. 21 in Evansville, Ind.
The University of Tampa Spartans hope to be there.
Daniel Feingold can be reached at dfeingold@ut.edu.
