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Last year, the men’s cross country team was looking to claim its first National Championship since 1954.
Things didn’t go as planned.
The Oklahoma State cross country team entered the 2008 Championship as Big 12 champions. Its strongest runner, then-freshman German Fernandez, was the individual Big 12 champion and an All-American.
The Cowboys arguably had the momentum and talent to win a national championship, but lost several runners to injury, including Fernandez, landing OSU an eighth place finish.
This season the Cowboys enter Nationals in an eerily similar position. The Cowboys won the Big 12 Championship, senior Ryan Vail ran away with the Big 12 individual title, and the team was victorious in the Midwest Regionals.
However, unlike last year, the team is not inundated with injuries.
Fernandez said last year’s events were unfortunate, and Murphy’s Law of “whatever can go wrong will go wrong” was an adage that perfectly described the disappointing end of the Cowboys’ season.
“Last year’s performance didn’t go as expected.” Fernandez said. “Everything that we wished not to go wrong went wrong, but this year we’re just trying to win it.
“Go out there and race like we know how to race and hopefully just win the Championship.”
The Cowboys are entering Terre Haute, Ind. on Monday ranked second in the nation, just shy of top-ranked Stanford.
Vail said the strategy throughout the season has been to run as a pack, but for Nationals they have a new game plan: to run as a pack, but finish every man for himself.
“I hope to have another pack of five guys through about 8k.” Vail said. “Then the last 2k is going to be every man for himself, but I don’t think we will finish that far apart again, but it will still be a little bit more spread out.”
Fernandez said he is almost ready to run.
“Health is good.” Fernandez said. “I just have to be ready to go when the day comes. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong until then. I’m not quite there yet. I’m about 99.8 percent.”
Given Fernandez’s record breaking history, the Cowboys should be able to manage without .2 percent of him.
Coach Smith, named Big 12 Coach of the Year for the second year in a row, said they will be the ones doing the following and not the leading this time.
“We get to chase the team (Stanford), which is a little bit different than we have raced all year,” Smith said.
“This is the first time we have gone in to it like we are chasing somebody.”
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Cross Country
What:
NCAA Cross Country Nationals
Where:
Terre Haute, Ind.
When:
Monday at 10:00 a.m.
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