Season Update - Q&A With Coach Clark
10/1/2014 12:00:00 AM | Cross Country
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The Stephen F. Austin men's and women's cross country teams were off this past weekend and are turning their attention to the Chile Pepper Festival at the University of Arkansas on Saturday, Oct. 4. The teams will head to Fayetteville, Arkansas on Friday morning, get some work in at the course on Friday afternoon and compete early on Saturday morning.
Head coach Cody Clark answered a few questions about the important meet coming up, the status of his runners and how the team has fared so far this season.
Q&A - Head coach Cody Clark
On how the men and
women used the off week this past week:
"Last week
was just a tough week of training. It was a time to just focus on our training
and not have to worry about a race. We really focused on our strength workouts.
We did short tempo on the track last Tuesday and what we call a pace run on
Friday where we ran on dirt roads. We were able to get a lot of mileage in -
more mileage than usual - to prepare for this coming weekend."
On the importance
of the Chile Pepper Festival this Saturday:
"The Chile
Pepper Festival will be a great opportunity for us to see a lot of teams in the
conference and in the region. With qualifications starting this past weekend,
if we have a really good meet and beat some good teams in the region, then we
can gain some points this weekend. It's a great opportunity for us. I think
both the men and the women are in good positions to do that. With where we're
at from a training standpoint, racing and getting to this meet, I feel really
good about the weekend. It'll be great weather and it'd be awesome if we could
pick off some teams that are traditionally really strong."
On the overall
health of the team:
"The
overall health right now is a lot better. We're missing some guys that might be
on the verge of our top seven, but as far as two of our heavier hitters, we got
one of them back this week which is a big plus. Charles Mathenge comes back to
us. He really hasn't skipped a beat. He's cross trained really hard, nursed his
injury and he'll be back in the mix of things for sure. On the women's side,
we've been pretty fortunate. Out of our top nine runners, everybody's at full
health and ready to go. With the meat of our season coming up, everybody for
the most part is in a good spot health-wise. Both sides are really excited
about this weekend. Workouts are going well, they're healthy and they're ready
to perform."
On the team goals
for the upcoming meet:
"Our team
goals are to beat teams in our conference and beat teams in our region that
might be ranked ahead of us at this time. I feel that this weekend is a great
opportunity to move up in the rankings and build our confidence a little bit."
On the individual
goals for the upcoming meet:
"Individually,
especially on the guys side, I want to see some of our guys running up there in
the top 10, top 20 at least. I think if we do that we're going to beat a lot of
teams. For the girls, we've done a really good job with our spread one through
five. I want to continue to shrink that time down and hopefully Shelby [Pesek]
or Brittany [Innis] can break away at some point and maybe get up there in that
top 10 or 15. That'd be huge for them. If we do that then we're going to do
well."
On junior Shelby
Pesek's leadership and consistency for the women's program this year:
"Shelby's a
really good leader for us. She leads workouts and she's kind of in her own
group right now. She's a young lady that's going to lead us and hopefully help
us to a conference title and a better finish at the South Central Regional
after that. She continues to make the group better because everyone is chasing
her in workouts."
Final thoughts on
the upcoming race:
"With this
being our first full distance race I think it will help us gain a lot of
confidence. The weather is supposed to be nice and the Chile Pepper is an
honest course. Usually what you run there is very indicative of what you can
run. It's a fair course - it's not hilly or slow - it's just a fair, honest
course. Overall, we're in position to take that next step as a team, gain that
confidence and hopefully by conference we're at our high-point so we can do
some awesome things."
-SFA-
