Twelve members of the Occidental College cross country teams competed at the 2023 NCAA DIII Pre-Nationals Invitational Oct. 7 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The men’s team placed 16th overall out of 38 teams, and the women’s team placed 20th overall out of 39 teams.
According to the Occidental Athletics website, Amir Barkan (junior) placed 43rd in the men’s 8k and Jenna LeNay (sophomore) placed 22nd in the women’s 6k, making them the two fastest times for the team.
Head coach Robert Bartlett said he selected the travel team based on the results from the two previous meets.
“The reason we use two meets is [because] the team got very sick… so that’s why we use the most recent results to figure out who’s going to travel,” Bartlett said.
The environment in Pennsylvania is drastically different from California and there are more Division III teams on the East Coast, which Bartlett said was part of their reason for traveling.
“On the East Coast, there’s a much larger density of Division III athletic programs. We can’t get into a race on the West Coast that’s as high quality, made up of just Division III teams,” Bartlett said. “Each year we try to travel so we can expose the team to different weather, different terrain and more intense competition. Our hope is that by doing that every year the team will learn to adapt to those circumstances and challenges.”
According to Barkan, the team did not change their workouts to prepare for pre-nationals.
“Going into it we were just really focusing on working on our base and threshold work, which means building a strong base without hitting any race-specific workouts yet,” Barkan said. “It was all kind of a build and build, just getting aerobically really fit.”
According to LeNay, the team left for the meet Thursday Oct. 5 to compete that Saturday. She said that they had to be up early in the morning and spent all day traveling.
“We had to be in front of Rush Gym to get on the bus at 3:50 a.m. on Thursday, and then [we] got on a plane at seven and had our first four-hour flight, a layover, and then another flight,” LeNay said.
LeNay said traveling was a lot less stressful this time compared to her freshman year.
“I felt like I knew what I was doing, what to expect. It was a lot of fun getting to spend a couple of days with my teammates, and the course was really fun as well,” LeNay said.
Barkan mentioned the course was one of his favorites and very different from the courses around LA.
“We started and it was all grass. We did a big grass loop — pretty flat — and then we went into forest, and that’s when it got really fun. We were in a very close forest doing zigzags and there were very steep hills. There were five or six 20-to-30-meter hills, and it was kind of like a roller coaster,” Barkan said. “The course was definitely a mix of a lot of different aspects — it felt like a true cross-country course in that sense.”
Barkan said despite the change in scenery, everyone on the team ran a solid race.
“We were all out of our element, but we were still able to perform in conditions like that which I was happy about,” Barkan said. “I feel like we have a lot more potential to perform better, but it was a good step forward from where we were at in the season to how we performed there.”
According to the Occidental College website, cross country has SCIAC championships and NCAA West Regionals to compete at before Division III championships in November. According to the NCAA website, the top team from each of the ten regions automatically qualifies, and 22 additional teams are selected at large for a total of 32 teams. For individuals, each region’s top seven athletes (not a part of a qualifying team) are selected, for a total of 70 runners.
LeNay said the team has adjusted their workouts to prepare for the end of the season.
“[We’re] just upping the intensity of our workouts and also as we get closer to the end of the season, we like to decrease our mileage as well,” LeNay said. “It’s kind of like higher intensity lower mileage, but other than that not much really changes.”
NCAA Division III championships will be held back at Dickinson College.
“For the team, a big goal of ours is top three at SCIAC’s, and then top five in the region, and then qualifying for nationals,” Barkan said. “It definitely is a complicated process qualifying as a team for nationals, but that definitely is a goal at the back of our mind.”
Contact Wura Ogunnaike at ogunnaike@oxy.edu
