Northwestern University Athletics
Women's Cross Country Heads to Pre-Nationals
10/11/2001 12:00:00 AM | Women's Cross Country & Track
Oct. 11, 2001
EVANSTON, Ill. - If Amy Tush and the seven runners she is bringing to the Pre-National Invitational believe in omens, they have to be feeling pretty good about their race Saturday in Furman, S.C.
Due to the number of teams participating in the event -- which is taking place on the course that will host the NCAA Championships in a month -- both the men's and women's fields were divided into two groups, and the races were named after the colors of the host institution, Furman. Northwestern will take their purple uniforms and run in the 37-team Purple race, which kicks off the day's festivities at 10:45 Eastern.
Northwestern's field features some formidable opposition -- five of the top 11 teams in the latest national poll will run with the Wildcats, including No. 1 Colorado. Tush's concern, though, is on the next group of teams.
"Our focus will be on teams like South Florida, Duke, Missouri, Georgia Tech and Columbia," she said. "Those teams are at the bottom of the national rankings or are receiving votes. It will also be nice to run with Missouri, because they are in our district and we can gauge ourselves that way, too."
After receiving votes in the Oct. 2 national poll -- the first time that has happened since the cross country program was revived in 1998 -- Tush sees Saturday's race as a chance to establish the Wildcats even more on the national scene. For that reason, she gave her top women last weekend off while taking a younger team to the Notre Dame Invitational.
"I think not racing last weekend was a big plus," she said. "We are coming up on midterms, and this gave some of our women a chance to catch up and gather themselves mentally. Sometimes outside forces can affect how you run."
While Northwestern's purple outfits figure to play well in the Purple race, Saturday's color scheme is actually a little lighter. Namely, Tush wants her women to follow the yellow hair-ribbons Saturday morning.
"At our last race, we all wore yellow ribbons in our hair," she said. "They served a dual purpose: we want to honor what's going on in our world, and yellow ribbons have long served as a symbol. At the same time, our goal in the race is to find each other on the course, and an easier way to do that is to look for the yellow ribbons. Some of our women said it helped them at the last race, which also had a large field, so we'll do it again Saturday."
Rachel Evjen, Diana Hossfeld, Karen Rogers, Nicole Kuznia, Sara Jurek, Nora Colligan and Kyna Forkins are scheduled to represent Northwestern Saturday. The Wildcats will again run without second team All-Big Ten selection Laura Evans and sophomore Emily Blakeslee, two regular scorers from a year ago.
"Rachel and Diana have been running very well, and will be right up there," said Tush. "The key to the meet for us is to have Nora and Sara getting up to Nicole, and Nicole getting up to Karen. If they all do that, we should have a very successful race."
