Women's Cross Country | October 18, 2019
KALAMAZOO, Mich. – The Western Michigan cross country team heads to the site of the 2019 NCAA Championships for the Under Armour Pre-Nationals at LaVern Gibson Championship Course at Indiana State University on Saturday.
The Broncos will be running seven athletes: Courtney Allen, Brittney Hall, Annalise James, Rebecca McNamee, Ashley Shipps, Paisley Sipes and Juliane Sormain at the race that will feature 695 total athletes. WMU is slated to run in the White Race which begins at 12:15 p.m.
Western Michigan is coming off a bye week and was last in action at the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational on Oct. 4. The Broncos had nine of their 13 runners finish with collegiate 5k bests that afternoon.
"The biggest thing I'm looking for this weekend is continuing the positive energy we had at Notre Dame," said assistant coach Tony Filipek. "A lot of those runners are competing this weekend, so I'd like for them to remember how it felt after and bring that type of positive energy we left Notre Dame with to Terre Haute. If you're positive and you're ready mentally, a lot of the times your race goes better."
The Pre-Nationals will be the second meet this season for Sormain, a senior who missed the first two meets due to injury. The French National finished in 14th place at the MAC Championships last season. Sormain was WMU's second finisher in Notre Dame, running a time of 18:17.40.
I think she broke the rust off. She's made some big jumps in volume in training. Her fitness is also progressing in a very good way. I think she's closer to where Brittney Hall is. We're starting to get to the point where our top two runners can run together, which will help propel them to better performances than they have had in the past."
Hall has been WMU's top runner at every meet this season.
Western Michigan heads to Eastern Michigan next Friday for the EMU Fall Classic before the 2019 MAC Championships on Saturday, Nov. 2 at Northern Illinois.
