When the cross-country season started this fall, both the women’s and men’s coaches thought this season would be a rebuilding year.

Both women’s coach Don DeNoon and men’s coach Bill Cornell lost their top runners to graduation, and came into the season with an abundance of inexperienced freshmen.

DeNoon lost the outstanding duo of Jennie Horner and Debby Daehler, who might have been the best one-two punch in the Missouri Valley Conference, and Cornell lost top runners Garth Akel and Neil Emberton, both MVC Individual champions.

Advertisement

Things did not turn out as bad as expected, and both coaches are confident in their teams as they head into the meat and patatoes part of the season, with the MVC Championship meet Sunday in Tulsa, Okla.

It’s been an interesting season, DeNoon said. I didn’t have a lot of expectations at the beginning. It was really tough to tell at the beginning(how good the team was). I knew I had Kim (Koerner) and Kelly (French) coming back, who had proven themselves, and I knew I had some talented young runners- but I didn’t think we could compete with the maturity and experience of Illinois State and Indiana State.

To the surprise of DeNoon, the team has come together in the month of October, and he considers it the most physically fit team he has had at SIUC.

The question is, will the maturity rise to the same level as the fitness level, DeNoon said. We have four runners running the same 4×800 times as Jennie Horner last year when she was at her peak.

DeNoon said the biggest improvement for the team has been in the performances of freshman Sharlene Downing and sophomore Raina Larsen.

Over the last five weeks, we’ve shown a lot of improvement. I think Kim’s performance at the Martin Foods Invite showed the team that if Kim can do it, we can do it, he said. I think Sharlene is the best No. 5 runner out of anyone in the conference, and Raina Larsen has helped with her strong performances lately.

Sophomore co-captain Kelly French, who finished 10th in the conference last season, has set a goal to finish in the top-10 this year. She could not single out the one reason for the teams boost in confidence lately, but offered a good explanation.

Advertisement*

We all just pulled together in practice, and there is a lot of competition among ourselves, she said. The freshmen are gaining a lot more confidence lately.

For the men, junior Stelios Marneros will be defending his MVC Individual Championship title from last season, while leading a talented group of young runners into the post season.

Freshmen runners Andrew Fooks, Jeremy Parks, and Joseph Parks will need to produce strong performances for a positive Saluki showing, and they are capable of that.

Cornell his team’s outlook was similar to DeNoon’s. He had a core of returnees, but had a lot of unproven runners, as well.

I knew we were young and talented, he said. Honestly, I though we would have to watch out for Northern Iowa and Illinois State, and I knew we were thin, but Neil Lisk has really done a hell of a job given us a sixth man and beating the twins (Jeremy and Joseph Parks) a few times.

Like DeNoon’s team, Cornell has seen his freshmen contribute more than he anticipated.

The freshmen have run above my expectations, and think they are all really confident, he said. They seem to be handling the pressure real well, and that comes from being top runners in high school and running in big races.

Pressure is nothing new to any of these freshmen. The twins were All-State runners at Eldorado High School, and Fooks has run in the senior national race in his native England.

The SIUC men are favored to win the MVC Championship, but Cornell said he prefers to be the underdog.

I think we deserve our No. 1 rating, he said. But, I don’t like having that monkey on our backs.

It is tough to tell who is more nervous about the race. Cornell said he has not slept well for quite a while, but Jeremy Parks said he really is not nervous right now, and does not expect to be before the race.

I had a dream that we only finished four runners, Cornell said (five runners make up the scoring).

Jeremy Parks said he is calm because he has refused to think about the race to much.

Since we’re expected to win, I’m trying not to think about it, he said. (when the gun goes off) I’ll mainly be thinking about getting out front, being comfortable, and trying to get the team out front early.

Cornell said the leadership of Marneros is the key for the team.

They (the younger runners) have learned to judge their pace off Stelios, and that has worked pretty good for the past few meets.