Rosenthal says somewhere between 9th and 12th is a strong finish for USC
The women’s cross country team will head to Nashville, Tenn. on Oct. 26 to compete in the SEC Championship race. The team finished third in their most recent event, the NCAA Division I preview meet in Louisville, Ky.
“We’re having a great year,” coach Stan Rosenthal said, adding that his team was ranked in the top 10 of the NCAA region in which the Gamecocks compete.
The SEC championship, however, will feature a formidable lineup. “This is as strong as the SEC has ever been,” Rosenthal said. “In fact ... every team in the SEC is ranked in their NCAA region, and most of them are ranked higher than us.”
Due to the depth of the conference, Rosenthal ranked his team at 13th place out of 14 teams in the conference. “We plan on doing a little better than that, but the reality is, as good as we are, there’s still a lot of teams there that are just better.”
Still, Rosenthal believes that the Gamecocks are capable of a strong showing. “If we have a great race, we’ll be somewhere between ninth and 12th, which would be good for us,” he said.
South Carolina will have its healthiest group of runners this season heading into the SEC championship. “Meredith Mill of course is the person that we’ve really been missing all season,” Rosenthal said. However, the sophomore from Maryland is improving, as she was the sixth member of the team to complete the last race.
Mill has been battling a nagging knee injury.
“She’s not damaging herself anymore,” Rosenthal said. “It hurts for her to run and it hurts a lot more after she runs.”
However, Mill showed up strong during several workouts, and Rosenthal expects her to be “up there with everybody else that’s been in our top five.
“There’s a group of freshman, and now Meredith, who are all close together,” Rosenthal said. “If they can race [together] like that and fight to see who’s going to be behind Penny [Boswell], then that will really help us.”
Boswell is another member of the team who is now healthy. After coming down with a serious congestive cold early in the season, Rosenthal said that she missed three and a half weeks of training. However, Boswell had a solid performance at the team’s last event where she was the third runner for the Gamecocks to cross the finish line.
“Yesterday we did a workout, and she was basically running with Kayla [Lampe] and Chelsea [France],” Rosenthal said. “She’s ready to have a great race physically.”
With 161 women competing in the conference championship, Rosenthal emphasized the importance of positioning in the upcoming race. “We’re trying to get some in the top 50. We want to get four or five in the top 60 or 70. If we can do that, then we’ll do well.
“We know Kayla and Chelsea need to be up there in front for us to be successful,” Rosenthal continued. “We know that our fourth and fifth and sixth runners need to not be too far in the back,” he said.
“We’re not focused on ... beat[ing] Tennesee or Auburn,” Rosenthal said. “It’s more like, let’s go out there and do our jobs.”