Allen Community College’s cross country team makes its final appearance at the Fort Hays University Tiger Open this Saturday before the postseason meets begin the following week.
The team was originally scheduled to run at a meet in Oklahoma last week, but coach Vince DeGrado decided against it. Instead, he wanted to keep to a three-week workout schedule the team had been using for the previous two meets.
“I felt they ran very well from the Memphis meet to the Missouri Southern meet which was three weeks,” DeGrado said. “They ran really well during the three weeks of training. Then, at Oklahoma State, they competed very well for it being as hilly as it is there.”
Mirroring the workouts is something that must have clicked with Allen’s men. They have been ranked no. 5 in the country the last three weeks.
“I think we’re probably ranked about where we should be,” DeGrado said. “At Missouri Southern, it was too hot to really run fast. Then the Oklahoma State course was really hilly and hard, so we’re not going to run fast there. I’ve never been a fan of trying to run a bunch of fast times all the time. I’ve been more of a strength first kind of coach.”
This next meet will be a final tune-up before the postseason races pick up, starting with the regional on Oct. 25.
“After these past two weeks of workouts, we’ve improved,” DeGrado said. “We’ve run very similar workouts to the previous three weeks, but I’ve gone a little faster and we’ve run a little faster. I guess I’ve done a little more speed tolerance workouts, where we went on the track a couple times.”
Pedro Montoya and Brock Artis have run 1-2 for Allen in every meet this season. If they expect to do well as a team, DeGrado said they will need to rely on the back half of the team to pick up its pace.
“I told the guys after a great workout on Saturday, if we are going to have a chance to win a regional meet, it’s going to come down to Connor (Immenschuh), Meschach (Adams), Trail (Spears), Jeremy (Brittain), Ben (Najman) and Daniel (Driskell),” DeGrado said. “It’s going to come down to those guys.”
Alisn Stevens has been running the women’s races on her own, without the help of teammates this season.
“I think she’s done pretty well. She’s had some pretty good workouts this past week as well,” DeGrado said. “She now has to put it in a race. I’m very happy with what we did and how we did it this past week. It’s just putting it into the race, and we’ve got a race that’s a fast course and good conditions. So, there is absolutely no excuses this weekend.”
Allen cross country preps for Fort Hays
