WALLA WALLA, Wash. – With two teams in tow, coach Malcolm Dunn gets to showcase experience as well as youthful talent when he hosts the annual Whitman College Invitational this Saturday at Fort Walla Walla Park.
The Missionaries are a relatively experienced lot on the men’s side, where the returning talent includes a handful of seasoned veterans who figure to run at the front of Whitman’s lead pack. The women’s storyline promises to run in a different direction, led by a number of speedy first-year athletes.
Saturday’s invitational gets underway at 10:45 a.m. with the women’s 4,000 meters, followed by the men’s 6,000 meters at about 11:15 a.m. Runners from Whitworth College and Northwest Nazarene University will also compete.
Dunn starts his second coaching season at Whitman with 22 women and 15 men on the roster. "It’s going to be a good season for both teams," he predicts. "As a coach, it was great to see how many quality runners showed up for the first day of workouts, ready to run and train hard."
Dunn sees enough ability and depth to forecast better seasons ahead for his Whitman teams, both of which placed seventh at last fall’s Northwest Conference Championships.
Despite its relative youth, the women’s squad is blessed with a good deal of raw talent. Both Sara McCune, a first-year runner from Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis, Ore., and Yasmeen Colis, a recent graduate of nearby Walla Walla High School, are prized recruits who might well run one-two for the Missionaries.
"I wouldn’t be surprised to see both Sarah and Yasmeen earn all-conference honors this fall," Dunn says. "There isn’t a coach in the conference who wouldn’t love to have both of them. We’re excited to have them with us."
McCune ran four years of varsity cross country and track & field at Crescent Valley, which has won 13 consecutive Valley League titles in cross country. She claimed the league’s individual title as a junior and was the runner-up as a senior. She also competed for Oregon in the annual Nike Border Clash cross country meet last fall, and then placed seventh this past spring in the 800 meters in Oregon’s Class 4A state track meet.
Colis also ran four years of high school cross country and track, although she struggled through injury-plagued senior seasons in both sports. After placing 17th as a junior at Washington’s state cross country meet, she slipped to 31st as a senior when a foot injury cut into her training. Her fate was similar in track, where she qualified for the state championships as a junior but came up short as a senior due to injury.
Caitlin Kearney, a Whitman senior captain, is the only returning veteran who Dunn expects to run in his women’s top five. She didn’t compete in her first year at Whitman but has made steady progress over the past two seasons. She made the team’s top five at last fall’s regional championship race.
"Caitlin is in much better shape than she was at this time last year," Dunn says. "We’re excited to see what she can do this fall. She was running very well at the end of last season."
Michela Corcorran, another member of Whitman’s talented first-year class, and Lisa Taylor, a junior running her first season of college cross country, round out Dunn’s expected top five. "Lisa ran in high school and had some success," he says. "She ran with our running club last spring and realized she was on a par with some of our better runners. She just needs to get used to running fast again."
Corcorran, who has a twin sister on the cross country team at Linfield College, is the younger sister of Maria Corcorran, a senior on the Whitman alpine ski team. "At this point, Michela really isn’t that far behind our top two runners," Dunn says.
To start the season, sophomore Alex Pogue and first-year competitors Megan Bush, Amy Chapman and Heather O’Moore form a second tier of Whitman runners. "Any one of them could break into our top five, and they give us much better depth than we had a year ago," Dunn says. "We have several runners who might help our team scoring on any given day."
In her first season a year ago, Pogue had Whitman’s sixth-best time at the conference championships and fifth-best time at regionals. "Alex is another athlete coming into this season in far better shape than she did last fall," Dunn says.
First-year runner Lizzie Littlewood, junior Rand Biersdorf, sophomore Lindsay Records and senior Emma Catmur are poised on the cusp of Whitman’s top ten. Biersdorf and Records are running for the first time, and Records and Catmur also compete on Whitman’s Nordic ski team.
Rounding out the women’s roster are senior Andrea Kunz, who is running for the first time, first-year competitor Emily Rodriguez, and a big group of sophomores – Katie Levy, Rachel Patterson, Betsy Schroeder, Rachel Stein, Fiona Taggart and Allie Freed. "They’re a great group to have on the team," Dunn says. "They are very committed and dedicated to the sport. They have a lot of fun, and they add a lot of positive energy to the team."
Despite the size of his women’s roster, Dunn plans to take everyone to most meets -- at least to those meets where schools aren’t limited in their number of entries. "We hope every runner gets to run in at least four college races," he says. "This isn’t a running club. It’s a competitive program, and the most important part is racing. That’s what makes cross country a great sport. Everyone is active. No one sits the bench in cross country."
While college experience is scarce among the Whitman women, that isn’t the case on the men’s side. Dunn’s projected top five includes senior Sam Clark, junior Brian Woods, sophomore Nick Littman and senior Adam Kopet.
"As a team, our men’s squad is coming off a much better summer of training than was the case a year ago," Dunn says. "Last year, our best time in the early 3-kilometer team time trial was 10:01. Last weekend, our top four runners broke 9:40 and Adam Kopet ran a personal-best 9:53."
Woods had Whitman’s best times at the end of the season, placing 23rd at the conference meet and 45th at the West Regional. Despite a late-season hip injury, Clark posted Whitman’s second-best time at the NWC championships. "Brian is another of our runners who is in much better shape to start the season," Dunn says. "If Sam can stay healthy, he can definitely be one of our top runners again and be in the hunt for all-conference honors."
Both Littman and Kopet have made major strides in the off-season, according to Dunn. "Nick has a much stronger aerobic base, and I don’t think anyone has worked harder than Adam this past spring and summer."
Matt Kelly, a freshman from Redmond, Wash., is the only newcomer to start the season in his coach’s top five.
Dunn’s second five includes what he calls two "huge question marks" in seniors Elliot Brian and Sam Johnson. "I’d normally list Elliot as one of our top runners, but he hasn’t done much training because of a knee problem," Dunn says. "If he’s able to train this fall, he’ll get stronger and faster as the season goes along. He has the raw material to work with."
Johnson, a key contributor on Whitman’s national champion cycling team the past two years, is running cross country for the first time. "There is a chance Sam could be our top runner by the end of the season," Dunn says. "He has the cardio-vascular engine and the mental toughness to do that. Right now, he just needs to learn what running and cross country racing are all about.
Others with a shot at rounding out the top 10 for the Whitman men are freshman Curtis Reid, juniors Eli Asch and Tim Marrinan, and senior Nick Johnson. Both Asch, who had Whitman’s third-best time at regionals last fall, and Marrinan fell behind in terms of summer aerobic work, and Johnson returns to the team after a two-year absence.
The men’s roster also includes junior Robert Marcotte, a member of the Nordic ski team, first-year sophomores Gus O’Malley and Travis Meyers, and freshmen Galen Cobb.
To help runners ease into the new season, both races this Saturday will be 2,000 meters shorter than the standard college lengths. Whitman teams will get their first full-length test on Saturday, Sept. 9, at the Lewis & Clark Invitational at McIver Park near Estacada, Ore. The NWC Championships are set this fall for Oct. 28 at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.