Cross country places 31st at Nationals
On Nov. 22, seniors Nicole Mericle and Britany Williams and juniors Becky Wade and Allison Pye reached the goal they had been training for for two years: compete at the national meet one final time. The group brought the team a 31st-place finish and Mericle finished higher than any Owl ever, at 46th overall. However, the results do not tell the whole story, as reaching the national meet was quite the accomplishment considering the past 24 months. Rewind to Nov. 24, 2008 - the last time these ladies raced together at Nationals. Pye and Wade were upstart sophomores, contributors to the team despite their youth. Mericle and Williams were juniors in the prime of their careers, both used to competing with the best week in and week out.
The team placed 22nd overall at Nationals that year, the culmination of a season full of successes. Rice was ranked 18th entering the season and maintained a ranking within the top 25 in the country all season long. The team finished eighth at two highly competitive national meets - the Notre Dame Invitational and the Pre- National meet.
After a season when each week brought another success, the Owls reached the national meet after placing second at the Conference USA Championship and the South Central Regionals on a win by Mericle, just like in 2010. After that season, Rice lost only two seniors, and thanks to a strong incoming class seemed poised to continue its winning ways in 2009.
After the season, Mericle said the team had high hopes for the coming year.
"Right after that season I think everyone was pretty excited about what was going to happen next year, even though we were going to be losing Lennie [Waite (Brown '08)] but we knew we were going to return four or five and bring new freshmen in," Mericle said. "We were optimistic at the end of 08."
However, during the offseason, the team's glory days were put on hold, when Mericle injured her metatarsal while competing in the steeplechase at the spring outdoor regional track meet. Then over the summer, Pye developed shin splints that refused to go away. At the start of the 2009 season, neither Pye nor Mericle was ready for competition.
By October, Pye and Mericle were still battling injuries, leaving Head Coach Jim Bevan with a tough decision: redshirt Pye, Mericle, Williams and Wade to save them for 2010, or continue 2009 without Mericle and Pye. Ultimately, Bevan redshirted the four ladies, leaving 2009 as a season for the more inexperienced runners to grow and for the core four to rehabilitate.
At that point, 2010 seemed sure to be a season full of victory and success. Then over the course of fall training and the spring track season, Wade experienced pain in her hip that just would not cease. Eventually, it was diagnosed that Wade had a torn labrum, requiring surgery that would keep her out of competition in 2010. Any chance for the core four to run together again, the reasoning behind redshirting the group in 2009, was gone.
Without Wade, the team persevered this year, still with the aim of reaching Nationals. However, the 2010 season lacked the steady stream of success that befell the Owls in '08. At both of the team's early season chances to qualify for Nationals, the Roy Griak Invitational and the Pre-National meet, Rice failed to place high enough to punch a ticket to Terre Haute in November. With their backs against the wall, the Owls either had to finish in the top two at Regionals, or be content without returning to Nationals for the second season in a row.
Then Bevan pulled one more trick out of his sleeve - the week of the Regional meet, he decided Wade was ready for competition. With the four reunited in competition, Mericle raced to win the South Central meet and the team pulled out a second-place overall finish.
Simply put, they had done it. After two seasons of one setback after another, Bevan and his top four had found a way back to the biggest stage of all - the national meet. For this team, the meet was the icing on the cake.
After all that, the team's luck seemed to run out a bit on that Monday morning. With a 20-25 mph wind blowing right in the faces of the runners to start the race, the large pack stayed together early in the race. That large group of the bulk of the race's 250 runners brought down Williams, as she became tangled up in the pack of runners and fell 250 meters into the 6,000-kilometer race.
Bevan said Williams' fall greatly affected Rice's overall performance in the race.
"Britany went down and a couple of our girls were right behind her and jumped over her and were looking back at her as she tried to get up," Bevan said. "She was about to get trampled, and for her own safety she had to let everybody go by her.
"Bottom line is by the time we got to the downhill segment, most of our team was at the very back of the whole field. . It's hard to play catch-up when you're behind in that situation. We didn't have a lot of luck in the beginning, so it cost us being in a position to compete with the teams I thought we could compete against."
Despite the setback, the team still did its best to battle through the rest of the race. Pye and Mericle had luckily emerged in the front of the pack and were able to continue to race strong. In fact, on her way to her 46th-place finish in 21:04, Mericle passed 80 runners between the 2K mark and the end of the race, according to Bevan.
Wade also made her way through the field, improving as the race went on, Bevan said.
"Becky moved up throughout the race," Bevan said. "That early back position didn't really hurt her because of the way it was necessitated for her race to develop."
Wade needed to hold back in the beginning, as she was only in her second race of the season. Eventually, she would be the second Owl to finish, coming in 128th in 21:50. Pye finished next for Rice in 22:08, followed closely by junior Halsey Fowler in 22:25, Williams in 22:29, freshman Meredith Gamble in 22:40 and sophomore Marie Thompson in 22:56.
While the team's race might not have been the finish they had hoped for, it does not diminish the legacies that Williams and Mericle will leave behind in their time at Rice, Bevan noted.
"They made it to the national meet three of their four years, which is an accomplishment which has never been done before," Bevan said. "Nicole's winning two regional championships, when we'd never had anyone win one, is quite an accomplishment. Britany came from being a number six runner when she was a freshman to being our number one runner off and on this year is just amazing.
"They are unique individually in their own unique ways but their contributions hopefully will be felt down the road, next year even. Britany and Nicole have helped this group in numerous ways that go unseen.
"There are some girls running today that wouldn't be running if it weren't for Nicole and Britany. They will be dearly missed.
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