SEATTLE - As the cross country season begins to pick up speed with this Saturday's Sundodger Invitational, both Washington squads find themselves in similar positions. Both are coming off top-10 finishes at the 2015 NCAA Championships, the first time in school history that the men and women finished top-10 in the same year. Both are replacing their No. 1 runners from a year ago, but five of the top-seven return on both sides. And both teams have their minds set on climbing even higher in the top-10 this fall.
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The Husky men's team powered to one of the best seasons in school history last year, winning the West Regional title for the first time ever, and finishing eighth at NCAAs, which tied for the second-best finish ever. Even without departed seniors All-American Izaic Yorks and All-West Region Tyler King, the returning Huskies now know what it takes to be a top-10 team, and are set to build on that.
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"I think our men's team has lots of firepower," says Head Coach Greg Metcalf, the 2015 West Region Men's Coach of the Year. "I think we have lots of guys that are capable at the front of our team in Colby Gilbert, Andrew Gardner, Fred Huxham and Johnathan Stevens, and after that we're kind of searching a little bit. I think Blake Nelson is better than he's ever been at this time of the year, and he's excited and I think he's very capable of playing that role. Can Mahmoud Moussa continue to make progress and become a big factor. I believe they're on the right track.
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"Then we have a couple very good freshmen in David Strome, Gavin Parpart and Nick Laccinole and some improved second year guys in Andy Snyder or Julius Diehr or Charlie Barringer, so I think our men's team has lots of interchangeable parts and pieces and that group is all about coming together on the right day at the right time and if that happens I think we have a really good men's team."
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The women's 10th-place finish a year ago was their sixth top-10 finish in the last nine years, and while the Huskies lost two-time All-American Maddie Meyers, and No. 6 runner Eleanor Fulton from last year's NCAA squad, the work that the Huskies did on the track last spring has hopes for this pack of Dawgs as high as they've been in years.
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"I think this is probably as deep a group of women as we've had since 2008," the year the Huskies won the NCAA Chamionship, says Metcalf. "This group has great leaders and is as talented a group we've had. We return four NCAA individual qualifiers from a year ago on the track and I don't think we've had that in a while. I think this group can be really good."
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"(Assistant Coach) Anita (Campbell) and I sit down at camp and have individual meetings with every one of our ladies and I think they all have big-time team aspirations. It's going to be hard, we're ranked number 11, and there's lots of great teams, and you don't have to be perfect, but you have to be pretty great and be at your best on Nov. 19. But having those conversations, we have seven women who have dreams and goals of being an All-American."
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The one returning Husky who has nailed up a cross country All-America certificate on his wall already is junior Colby Gilbert, who is poised to pick up where he left off in the spring. Gilbert set the UW school record in the 5,000-meters (13:35.20) at the Pac-12 Track Championships, where he became Washington's first ever conference champ at the distance, and he finished 13th at the NCAA Outdoor meet in Eugene.
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"I think from the very moment Colby walked on our campus he has been very goal oriented and focused," said Metcalf. "His freshman year he wanted to go run in the World Junior Championships, and he did that. Last year he kind of came into his own. He's an All-American in the fall, an All-American indoors, and had as good a Pac-12 Championships as I've ever seen, so he's poised to help take this team to the next level. He's now a 13:35/3:40 guy coming back and I think he's as good as any athlete we've ever had coming into the fall. We have one senior in Blake Nelson, and I think we have great leadership and great ability at the front, but I think right now Colby is the leader of our group and behind him is a talented supporting cast."
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Colby Gilbert finished 32nd at last year's NCAA Cross Country meet for his first All-America honor.
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Qualifying for his first NCAA Outdoor meet this past spring was Andrew Gardner, now in his junior season of cross. Gardner was 96th last year at NCAA Cross as the third Husky finisher, and went on to reach NCAA Outdoors in the steeplechase.
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"Andrew had a very strong cross country season last year and outdoors was great for Andrew," says Metcalf. "I think the Pac-12 Championships at home was awesome for him, to go be fourth in the steeple and run a big PR, and then come back the next day and run 13:59 for 5k and springboard that into being an individual qualifier for the NCAA Outdoor Championships was fantastic. I think right now he's more confident than he's ever been. Our conversations are spirited about what he believes he can go do. It's exciting, Andrew trained hard this summer and he's training hard right now, so as long as we rest at the right time, I think he'll be very good."
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Also coming off his best track season yet is Fred Huxham, who finished exactly 100th at NCAA Cross last year, three seconds behind Gardner. Huxham broke the UW freshman record on the track this past spring, running 13:44.39 to take seventh at Pac-12s, and he was 17th in the West Region, missing NCAAs by just five spots.
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"Fred was literally 200 meters away from qualifying for the NCAA Outdoor Championships," says Metcalf. "He didn't have a perfect summer, but he just has greater perspective as to where he is, and his confidence will build every week. He won't race the first meet or two but as we get to the Wisconsin Invite and beyond, I think Fred will get better every week, and hopefully swoop in, and I think he's one of four guys on our team right now that believe they have a shot to go be an All-American this fall."
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The fourth man on that list, and the fourth Husky to run a sub-14-minute 5,000-meters last spring, is Johnathan Stevens. Stevens went 13:57.65 on the track to win his section at the Stanford Invitational, and advanced to West Prelims in the 1,500-meters for the second time. He came up big for the Dawgs at NCAA Cross Country last year, closing strong to finish 178th overall as UW's No. 5 finisher, capping the team's scoring to secure the eighth-place team finish.
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Finishing strong is something Metcalf hopes becomes the theme with Stevens. "At NCAAs with 2k to go we realized we were 18 points out of 10th place, and we told Johnny go get 18 places, and when you look at the results and there's a green arrow next to his name? I think he relished that moment and that experience. That's invaluable going into this year's meet. I think he had a really good track season, but I think the last two years of his college career is all about finishing, and running great at championship time. Emotionally I think he's grown and he's prepared to do it. He's as talented a kid as we have on our team for sure."
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So if personal-bests on the track are any indication of cross country success, and history shows that they most certainly are, then the Huskies are in great shape up front.
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"This is the fastest four guys we've ever had at 5,000-meters. We've never had four guys on one team that have come into the year having run under 14-minutes, and I think cross country success starts right there."
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Just as important to the team's success this year will be the five through seven spots and who can step in to score for the Huskies for the first time in championship season. One of the main contenders figures to be Blake Nelson, the team's lone senior, coming off a great track season where he helped the Husky DMR finish second at NCAA Indoors, and then he earned All-America honorable mention in the 1,500-meters outdoors.
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"Blake is a gamer," says Metcalf. "There are a couple of examples in his career starting with the NCAA Indoor DMR in New Mexico, he runs a phenomenal 1,200 meters and delivered the goods on the biggest stage of his career at that point. Fast forward to this year runs another great 1200 meter leg at Notre Dame to get us to nationals and at the NCAA Indoor Championships, he hasn't run an 800-meters in years, but he runs a 1:50.00 PR and hands the stick off in the lead to give Izaic a shot to win. I think he relishes the stick on the track, and I think this year, this is the equivalent for cross country. We need to be in a position where hopefully we can rest him, and not have to run him in back to back 10ks at the end, but I think when he's thrust into the situation to go finish the deal he relishes the responsibility. What I've seen in the first few weeks of his summer, I think he's prepared and very capable of doing it.
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Very much in the mix as well is Mahmoud Moussa, as the sophomore was the No. 7 runner for the Dawgs at nationals a year ago, a valuable learning experience.
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"Mahmoud is a 14:25 5k guy and although I think his track season was not everything he hoped it would be, now as we're at camp and finishing up a long run Mahmoud and Colby and Andrew are running at the end of a very long effort, and I see Mahmoud digging in, and he's made the commitment from a training standpoint to give himself a shot. Being at the NCAA Championships pays big dividends the second time you do it, and that is our goal for Mahmoud."
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Fred Huxham was 22nd at both Pac-12s and West Regionals last year and seventh in the Pac-12 5k on the track.
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Also vying for a spot will be junior Keith Williams who ran well at the opening UW-Seattle U. Open at Chambers Bay on Sept. 2. Metcalf says Williams has had a good summer and is poised for his best fall yet. Redshirt freshman Julius Diehr was right behind Williams and Moussa at the Chambers Bay time trial, and Metcalf says if thrust into competition, "Julius or Andy Snyder will be ready to go. They are hard-working guys that want to help."
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Out of the six freshmen on the roster, David Strome, Gavin Parpart, and Nick Laccinole made strong first impressions, running with the lead group at the UW-Seattle U. Open. Whether someone from that group steps forward to impact the squad this fall remains to be seen, but the potential is certainly there.
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"I'm excited about this group of freshmen men. None will run in uniform at the Sundodger, but after that I would guess one or two may wear a uniform at the Washington Invite.
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The men have now seen what's possible, with the West Region victory and first top-10 finish in over 20 years realigning their sights.
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"We go to the NCAA Championships and were a top-10 team, but I think we walked away saying we had a chance to be a little higher than that," says Metcalf. "So bringing back Colby and Andrew and Fred and Johnny and Mahmoud, it's just one of those things you do it one time and you want to do it again."
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While the men have four sub-14-minute 5k runners to start with, the women have four individual NCAA Outdoor qualifiers to make for a similar prospective lead pack. Katie Knight, Anna Maxwell, Amy-Eloise Neale, and Charlotte Prouse all had breakout springs with several of the fastest times in school history. Translating that over to the cross country courses will now be the goal.
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"Sitting here in the middle of September I think that our women's group has the capability and the potential to be special, but we've got to keep it all headed in the right direction," Metcalf says. "But we have four women that qualified for the NCAA Championships, then on top of that you have a 16:04 5k girl in Izzi Batt-Doyle and a 16:19 5k girl in Kaylee Flanagan who has run at two NCAA Cross Country Championships. Also Emily Hamlin is way better than she was a year ago, and you throw in the freshman Kaitlyn Neal who ran one of the fastest indoor 3k times ever in high school last winter, so this women's team has depth, they have great leadership, and I think from top to bottom they are as tough a group as we've had."
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Whereas Maddie Meyers could be expected to lead the way for the Dawgs the past two years, and she did for 12 straight races, ending with an eighth-place finish at last fall's NCAA Championships, the quartet of NCAA qualifiers could make for a strong pack of purple up front.
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"Those four specifically had very solid summers and come into this season in my opinion as prepared as they've ever been," Metcalf says. "They're priding themselves on doing it together and being so good that they're interchangeable."
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The No. 2 Husky across the line at nationals last year was Prouse, who capped a great freshman season with a run to the NCAA finals in the steeplechase, finishing ninth, and then carried her season on to the World Junior Championships, where she set a Canadian Junior Record in the finals with a 9:44.62 to place sixth, which Metcalf found particularly amazing.
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"She runs a PR at the end of July her freshman year," he says. "Nobody does that, it's not supposed to be possible. But I think she learned a lot from the NCAA Championships. For her to run 9:44 was fantastic and a great experience on the world stage that I think will help every piece of her career moving forward. But it's incredible what a difference a year makes. She's just better than a year ago. She's stronger, she's more confident in what she can do, and I think she has a better idea of what to expect moving into a full cross country season. It's going to be a fun year for her."
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Maxwell and Neale both made their way to NCAAs in the 1,500-meters for the first time, capping off a big breakout season for Maxwell and a remarkable comeback for Neale. This time last season, Neale was just getting back into running, having not competed for a year and a half. She sat out a second consecutive cross country season, but by June, she ran a huge career-best of 4:13.93 in the NCAA semis to move on to the final where she finished 10th overall.
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Metcalf says that where Neale ended up from where she began last fall is one of the biggest victories in and of itself that he's ever seen from an athlete. "She had to scratch and claw her way back into this and she made it all the way to the NCAA 1,500 final," he says. "She didn't run as well as she wanted in the final, so that kind of fueled her fire, but just to be sitting here one year removed it's just awesome to see the progress and listen to her, she just has perspective, she sounds mature, what we're seeing right now is I think the very best version of Amy-Eloise Neale we've ever seen. That's not pressure, she has big time expectations of herself, and she is excited and ready to go have a great cross country season."
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Maxwell came just two places short of joining Neale in that NCAA final last spring, and posted one of the fastest times in the NCAA last year when she dropped a 4:12.62 at the Payton Jordan Invitational. But it was what Maxwell did to double back and score in the Pac-12 5,000-meters shortly after taking fourth in the 1,500-meter final that impressed Metcalf the most.
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"I just think that event right there is a screaming example of what she's capable of doing when she puts her mind to something," as Maxwell finished fifth in just the second 5k she had run in college. "She's got phenomenal range. I think her first two years have been good, and her next two years can be great. This group is all excited about what the team aspect of cross country means. It's different when you're running for yourself versus running for six other women on the starting line and Anna is most excited about that. Anna is very capable of something very cool this fall."
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The end of Knight's track season was punctuated by a Pac-12 title, as the junior rolled around the Husky Track oval 25 times in a championship meet record of 33:20.02 to win the 10,000-meter title. Knight then easily advanced through West Prelims to her first NCAA Outdoor final site, ultimately finishing 15th in Eugene to earn All-American Second Team honors. She also clocked a 5k PR of 15:52.70 at the Payton Jordan Invite and a 1,500m PR of 4:21.35. Knight was 95th at the NCAA Cross Country meet a year ago but her track season showed she had reached a new level of fitness and experience.
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"Katie didn't run as well at the NCAA Outdoor Championships as she would have liked and as we would have hoped, but she gets fired up about those things," says Metcalf. "I think she's a pretty cerebral young woman and she processes and wraps her brain around this, and I think she's excited more about what this team is capable of doing and her role in it. It's great to have a girl at the front of your team that's a Pac-12 champion and that's run a handful of NCAA Championships already. She has two cross country seasons left, and I'd love to be sitting here talking about Katie being a two-time All-American. That's the goal."
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Amy-Eloise Neale running in the finals of the NCAA Outdoor Championships at 1,500-meters last spring. She will run XC for the first time since 2013.
Β The lone senior on the roster, Kaylee Flanagan, capped Washington's scoring at NCAAs last year as the fifth Husky across in 134th-place overall. Flanagan scored at Pac-12s last year in the 10k, taking sixth, and Metcalf says the senior is doing everything she can to make her final year her best.
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"Kaylee is light years better than she was one year ago," says Metcalf. "Kaylee last year was 36.2 seconds away from being an All-American, and she looks at that as a challenge. I think she came back from the summer with renewed enthusiasm for what this is. This is her senior year, and I walked away from our meeting with her fiercely excited about where she is headed. She's fit, she's strong, she's run on the Terre Haute course a number of times. She's excited about our team and her role in it."
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Washington's final returner from last year's NCAA squad is sophomore Emily Hamlin, who gained valuable experience through her first year and is another athlete that Metcalf says is way better than she was a year ago and ready to help the team.
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Not a returner, exactly, but not quite a new addition is Izzi Batt-Doyle, who came to Washington for the start of the outdoor track season, scoring in the 5,000-meters at the Pac-12 meet and finishing 17th in the West Region in the steeplechase. Batt-Doyle transferred from St. John's, where she led her squad at every big meet, but now she gets to enjoy running with a pack.
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"I loved how it worked out that Izzi got to come in the springtime," Metcalf says. "We got to put her in the mix and learn a little more about her, and she's better prepared her for this season. Izzi is appreciative of having great teammates, and is appreciative of the opportunity that she has. She's a hard-nosed woman, she's trained hard and she's running a lot right now, and she has big goals. If she's the girl that's finishing our scoring or in that ballpark, we have a shot to be really, really good."
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The Huskies also will benefit from a group of upperclassmen who can add to the depth and have some big meet experience of their own. Kelly Lawson, who has raced at the past two Pac-12 cross country meets, including a 36th-place finish in 2014, is back racing and making "steady progress" according to Metcalf. "We just want to keep her going in the right direction and see where that leads. Joey Bosserman is coming off her best track season and Metcalf says Bosserman "has real goals, and she wants to help our team this fall. I'm excited about where she is as we roll into our first meet of the year." Grace Hodge is another veteran with a good summer of training in the bank who is poised for her best fall and if she or Bosserman are running at the Pac-12 meet "they will do a great job for us," says Metcalf.
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Every year the Huskies have managed to bring in some impressive talent able to contribute right away on the women's side, and Metcalf thinks that trend can continue this year with the freshman class, with New Yorker Kaitlyn Neal bringing in the best credentials as she was 15th at Nike Cross Nationals to lead her team to the national title. Neal also clocked the No. 2 time in the U.S. in the 3,000-meters indoors, running 9:28.59.
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"Kaitlyn was on a national championship team last fall and I think she continued to improve throughout the year. She had a little foot injury that slowed her down this summer, so she's been slow to get started, but she trained her tail off this summer. If we make good decisions with her I think she has a great chance to help our team this fall."
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Newcomers joining Neal include Nikki Zielinski, and Katherine Penner, along with Micaela Kostecka and Briegan Bester who will lean more towards mid-distances.
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"I think Nikki is a tough-nosed young woman and wants to run, we'll probably put her in a uniform but we'll see how this weekend goes. She works hard and is filled with desire. Katherine Penner from Bellevue I think is a talented young woman, I don't know if she'll be in uniform this fall but I'm excited about seeing her on the track this spring."
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Whether they contribute in the next few months or farther down the line, the freshmen will certainly have some strong examples to follow, as the group's maturity is the thing that continues to impress Metcalf.
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"We sat through meetings and we as coaches were struck by the same realization. Wow, this group is mature, they are focused, they are calm. It should be fun."
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