Due to a below-average performance at the Auburn Invitational Saturday, SIUC women’s cross-country coach Don DeNoon said he will loosen his squad’s training schedule.

The move comes after DeNoon noticed his entire team seemed tired and lost its strength in the late stages of the meets at the Auburn and Midwest Invitationals.

DeNoon said he believes in his training program, but he may be expecting too much from his young team.

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I’m going to eliminate the morning runs just to see if we can ease up on the mileage and sharpen up some, he said. With this young of a team, I might be expecting too much of them. I haven’t been used to working with such a young team. Maybe I’m expecting them to adapt and mature too fast, and they don’t have the strength yet.

Freshman runner Sharlene Downing said she liked the training program, but still would enjoy having the morning runs eliminated.

It was good conditioning, I liked it and thought it made us stronger, she said. It will probably help us. It’ll give us some time to rest.

DeNoon said he can not point the finger directly at the training, so he is also looking at other solutions.

I can only assume we aren’t recovering well, he said. If it was one or two people, I could look at other things, but since it seems to be the whole team I have to think it’s the training. I’m looking for the answer.

The questioning of the conditioning comes after the harriers finished 10th out of 20 teams at the Auburn Invitational and ninth out of 36 teams at the Midwest Invitational in Parkside, Wis.

Strength and strong legs are not the only things being questioned by DeNoon. He also said the runners had a plethora of mental obstacles to deal with.

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It was pretty tough competition, he said. We did run pretty well because these times are not slow. There were as many athletes as there were at Parkside, and if you don’t get out, you’re stumbling over the feet of the other runners.

DeNoon used the time of junior team co-captain Kim Koerner, who placed 42nd out of 201 runners at Auburn, as an example of the obstacles the runners have to contend with mentally.

I think her time is reflective of her running with some people jostling with each other, he said. Kim had some words with one of the runners, and Leah Steele said she got shoved into a post. That kind of stuff takes it out of you.

Koerner said after the Midwest Invitational, the team may have been a little intimidated by the number of runners at the meet.

With such a young team, I think we got a little psyched out with the size of the meet, she said.

Even though the runners may be having a tough time now, DeNoon said it is good for them in the long run.

I think this will help them compete in the conference meet and help our confidence, he said. We’ve competed against top competition this year. A Top-25 team has been in every meet this season.