Bronze medalist leads pack to nationals
By Ryan Rogers
Sports Editor
November 7, 2007
 The Lancers Cross Country men’s and women’s team both qualified for the National Championships to be held next weekend in Victoria, B.C.
At the Ontario University Athletics championships, hosted in London, the men’s team finished in second place capturing a silver medal for the team, while the women’s team surprised many as it placed third, also qualifying for the national championships.
With the second place finish, the men’s team is now seeded in second place in Canada heading into the championships, while the women’s team sits in fifth.
There’s even more at stake than just the national championships, said Head Coach Dennis Fairall. “It’s also selection for the World University Games team, this year it’s in France. First six across the line are invited to attend,” said Fairall.
For the men’s team, Andrew Coates placed third overall, capturing an individual bronze medal, and he was followed by Dave Weston (seventh), Deng Marial (11th), Matt Sinclaire (13th), and Andrew Auguanno (14th) in the OUA finals.
The women’s team was led by Lisa Brooking who placed sixth, followed by Lindsay manning (ninth), Hannah Eberhard (14th), Jessica Reid (28th) and Beth McChesney (30th).
Coach Fairall is taking the team out to the west coast three days early to help prepare them for competition. “We’re going out Wednesday night, because acclimatization is important. No point in going in the day before and running with jet lag. By going out Wednesday night at least they’ll be able to have Thursday and Friday to acclimatize … an opportunity not to rush around … it just provides us to give them an opportunity to get them in the frame of mind for the national championships,” said Fairall.
The Windsor Cross Country team is very large, but qualified teams can only select seven runners for the final competition, a selection which is very difficult, said Fairall.
“By rule we can only compete seven, but we’re sending out eight because you never know what can happen – but we can only run seven,” he said.
“It’s always difficult (to choose the final seven). [It was] clear on the women and more difficult on the men. We go with our gut feeling, and hopefully we select the right people. We are a team, and that’s important to know, regardless of their commitment they are a team. We feel that we selected seven, but we’ve got 15 on our roster and all those 15 are part of the team,” stressed Fairall.
While both teams turned out strong performances in the provincial competition, the success of the women’s team came as a bit of a surprise. While expecting three of their to runners to return to compete this season, Jackie Mallet and Leigh Langrand left Windsor to pursue masters degrees while Beth Janssen has been injured and unable to compete to the peak of her abilities.
Said Fairall, “[This is the women’s] best finish since 1995. We’ve got a great deal of depth fortunately.” He listed the team’s assets; “Lindsay Manning was voted as captain, and second team All-Conference. Lisa Brooking has come out of obscurity, she’s always had the talent, but always been hurt. And Hannah Eberhard who was all Canadian in the 1,000 has stepped her game up.” All-in-all, Fairall is proud to have three women and five men named All-Conference heading into the finals. “There’s only 14 All-Conference [players],” said Fairall, “and we had eight of them.”
Captain Lindsay Manning, competing in her fourth year, will be running in her final varsity race this weekend. “I’m just trying to keep everything the same, just trying to not really focus on it as my last race, but another race for us to do well and run together and hopefully have some good results,” she said.
Manning has also been impressed with the results the women’s team has posted. “Yeah, I’ve been really, really impressed because coming in we lost three of our main runners and we didn’t expect the outcome that we’ve received so far. I’m really impressed with the outcome this year. We’re hoping to continue that next weekend,” said Manning.
Coach Fairall has compared the outcomes that his women’s team is achieving to the 1995 women’s cross-country team, who won the national title.
Bronze medalist Andrew Coates turned in a remarkable performance, but even more so when you consider that he’d only been able to train for the OUs for five weeks due to illness and a stress fracture in his shins.
Coach Fairall said, “What happened in the summer when he was running he had a stress fracture, he just cleared up with a stress fracture, and then somehow got mono, so only [he’d] been running for five weeks.”
Fairall’s advice during the provincials was to keep it simple. “I told him just to run, don’t try and be a hero. He was at the level he could have won the OUs had he not been sick,” said Fairall.
Coates took the advice. “This weekend past was a good stepping stone for myself, I just wanted to go in and have a good solid race. This past week of workouts has gone really well. I think there’s no reason why myself and the rest of the guys on the team can’t have an even better showing next weekend,” said Coates.
On the physical afflictions, Coates said, “Mentally, it’s taken its’ toll. It’s very frustrating to have major setback like a stress facture and sickness, so I’ve kind of just tried to live with it and get better every workout. Try and just work through the setbacks I’ve been given and it’s gone fairly well,” said Coates.
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