Freshman makes instant impact on cross country 
Kayla Lampe didn’t take long to establish herself as a dominant force on South Carolina’s cross country team.
The freshman won the Gamecock Invitational on Friday with a time of 17 minutes, 10.20 seconds, defeating her closest competition by 54 seconds. Running in her first college meet, Lampe broke the course record and led USC to first place in the field of five teams.
“I didn’t expect to do as well as I did,” Lampe said. “It was really exciting, and then to see the rest of the team do so well and to have a victory was a really good feeling.”
A native of Downingtown, Pa., Lampe considered the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Delaware before a visit to USC convinced her to become a Gamecock.
“I decided to look at South Carolina because coach [Stan] Rosenthal was recruiting me, and I came down here, took a tour and fell in love with the school,” Lampe said. “I liked a lot of the ideas that Coach Rosenthal had, and I thought the program was building up and getting better.”
In addition to cross country, Lampe plans to compete in both indoor and outdoor track this year. She said she ran the 5K last year but will probably step up to the 10K this upcoming season.
Lampe said the biggest adjustment from high school to college cross country has been a huge increase in mileage during training. She also said that while practices vary, the team runs up to 70 miles in a week. If runners don’t cover enough distance in practice, Rosenthal encourages them to run extra on the side.
“Everybody is different,” Lampe said. “I’m doing 60 miles a week right now. There are girls that are running in the 35-mile range, but they would do faster, shorter runs, and some people do longer, slower runs. It’s just what you prefer and what works for you in terms of getting better.”
USC will not compete again until Sept. 15, when the team travels to Nashville, Tenn., for the Vanderbilt Pre-SEC Invitational. The two-week break gives the team an opportunity to improve its speed with intervals and other challenging workouts.
Lampe said her individual goal is to drop her time below 17 minutes, but she also looks forward to playing a part in the team’s success and improvement.
“I’ve [run below 17 minutes] for track, but it’s different when you’re running on a cross country course with hills and grass. Your time is automatically going to be slower,” Lampe said. “At SECs, my main goal is for us to do really well as a team — definitely better than last year.”
Lampe, a nursing student, is one of 20 freshmen on the cross country team this year, and she said the new talent will help South Carolina improve upon its 11th-place finish at last year’s conference championships.
“I think it’s great that we’re a young team,” Lampe said. “We have a lot of talent coming in this year. A lot of the top finishers behind me [at the Gamecock Invitational] were actually in the freshman class, so I’m really excited to see what they can do. I think the program has come a long way since even last year. We have a lot of potential to do well at SECs this year.”