By Tommy Valentine, Staff Writer
Nearly three months ago, the men’s cross-country team posted one of their best collective performances at the Atlantic 10 Championship in roughly a decade.
Now, head coach Bob MacFarlane and his rising group of runners are making headlines yet again. This time, it’s the track teams turn.
In just the fourth season since the program returned to St. Bonaventure, the men’s and women’s track teams have already made history. Last Friday, the two teams traveled to Houghton, New York, to compete in their first-ever indoor track meet. The Houghton College Highlander Invitational was the first of three indoor invitationals on the Bonnies’ schedule this season.
But what is so significant about the track team partaking of an indoor event, is that it shows this program’s desire to begin to establish a culture of excellence. Over the past three seasons the earliest a track meet has been scheduled was March 23. This season, the Bonnies will have had three meets under their belts before they lace up for their first outdoor invitational on March 28.
It’s clear the goal of this program is to continue to establish a precedent. Just four years in, MacFarlane believes the indoor meets are just the first step.
“The program is evolving,” said MacFarlane. “Every year is a little bit of a baby step. Since I’ve been here, we’ve introduced and done things that hasn’t been done here before. We’re already in the process. Next year we’re looking into a really big meet, where the kids are competing against top kids in the country. That’s the only way you’re going to start finding out where you really stand.”
The majority of the men’s and women’s rosters are comprised of runners who competed during the cross-country season. Typically, there is a four-month gap between the end of the cross-country season and the beginning of the track season. Of course, there is plenty of training and practices that happen in that span, but you’re looking at these athletes going one-third of a year without facing competition from opposing teams.
If the track schedule continues to be arranged in the coming years like it was this season, those days of lengthy layoffs are over. And the athletes themselves prefer it that way.
“For winter training, I think you can get really unmotivated,” said Lindsay Clawson, a freshman runner from Allegany, New York. “These meets, I think, are keeping us all motivated in knowing we have something every weekend to look forward to.”
For many of the MacFarlane’s runners, the indoor terrain is not unfamiliar. Clawson felt right at home inside the Kerr-Pegula Fieldhouse. She raced there during her senior year at Allegany-Limestone High School.
“It tied together nicely for me. My last year of high school and my first year of track here,” said Clawson.
And Clawson had the results to boot last week. She finished in third place out of 13 runners in the 3000-meter run with a time of 12:02.72.
Clawson wasn’t the only member of the women’s team to have a successful trip to Houghton. Senior Jenna Cherry posted a strong time of 1 minute, 54.95 seconds in the 600-meter run, which was good for a sixth-place finish. Sophomore Amberlee Robertson notched a top-5 finish in the 800-meter run coming in fourth at 2:34.81.
The men’s team was also paced by a first-year runner. Smethport, Pennsylvania-native Darion Gregory caught the eye of his head coach with a 10th place finish in the one-mile run, beating out 21 other runners.
“I saw a lot of guts,” said MacFarlane. “When he got passed, I mean he fought. That’s what we want to see.”
It was the fight in Gregory that MacFarlane eluded to that moved him back up to the top spot after passing two Houghton College runners in the final 200 meters of the race.
Not only did Gregory have a little fight in him, he had confidence as well.
“When I hit that last lap, I could tell they [the two runners] were kind of dying back and I had the kick so I could go get them,” said Gregory.
While the results of last week’s invitational were undoubtedly promising, for this program to continue the upward slope it has found itself on the last couple of seasons, they’re not the only thing that matters.
“I don’t look at where they’re [the team] placed at. I just want to see what their times and their splits were,” said MacFarlane. “As a coach, you can see if a kid’s giving you 100%. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for a good attitude. Going into a meet and having some confidence in yourself and going out and performing at the level that we expect you to perform at.”
While the long-term goals MacFarlane has in place for this program are irrefutably ambitious, he has a rudimentary set in mind for his runners.
“We just want to keep getting better,” said MacFarlane. “PR [personal record] state of mind. That’s what our theme is this year. I just want to become competitive. Both as a team and as individuals.”
The Bonnies will be right back at it on Friday when they take the short trip to Rochester for the Tiger Invitational, hosted by the Rochester Institute of Technology. The meet is scheduled to get underway at 4:00 p.m.
valenttr19@bonaventure.edu
