Cross country team gets set for regional championship

Christina Hammett

The Advocate

Mt. Hood Community College Cross Country coach Tony Boracco said that the team will face their toughest challenge yet at the NWAACC Southern Region Championships Saturday in Battleground, Wash.

The Saints, seeded fourth for the event, will face some of the best teams in the Northwest including Lane and Clackamas community colleges and five other community colleges, according to Baracco.

“We have really great competition,” he said.

At the championships, ribbons are given to the top 14 runners and Baracco believes several of his runners have a chance to place including sophomores Michel Wilson, Kari Stapish, Chris Cosmi, and Neil Robertson, and freshmen Ashley Mulvaney, Maria DuBay, Alex Morales and Isaac McNutt.

“It doesn’t matter if both the men and the women come in fourth place this Saturday because we are a better team than last year. We have more people out and a good freshman class that will return,” he said. “We are bigger and we are better and we can go after it. If we run hard, we’ll do well. We’ll do better than fourth. I would like to see as many people as possible come home with a ribbon.”

This week, Baracco cut down on the amount of time spent practicing and focused on getting his team ready mentally for the championships. The reason why practices were cut down was because he didn’t want any of his runners to get injured before the meet. “Sometimes, you can do too much in the last few days that can hurt people rather than help them,” he said.

One of the Saints, freshman Nolan Mulvaney, was injured earlier this season when he cut his knee in a fall and will be missed by many at this week’s competition.

“We’re looking pretty good right now, so we’ll probably do well. If we had Nolan, we’d do excellent but I think we’ll be fine,” said sophomore Neil Robertson.

While the weather in the Northwest is usually questionable, cross country meets are rarely cancelled, so runners have to grow accustomed to running in the elements.

“We’ve got to get used to running in bad weather. Get out there and get cold,” said Baracco. “If it’s raining, we’ve got to run in the rain, we’ve got to run in the wind, we’ve got to run in the snow. If it’s 95 degrees out, we’ve got to do the same, so we get used to it.”

The cross country season concludes Nov. 13 when the Saints go to Seattle for the NWAACC Championships. Overall, Baracco thinks that this season has been a success. “The season has progressed and people keep improving. We started out at the end of August and we just kept growing and improving each and every week,” he said. “And there are still more good things to come.”