49er Women Head to Pre-Nationals

Long Beach State Heads to Pre-Nationals
The 49er Women Look to Compete With the Nation's Top Teams

October 11, 2006

LONG BEACH, CA -- The Long Beach State women’s cross country team will travel to Pre-Nationals in Terre Haute, Indiana on Saturday, October 14 where they will compete on the same course that will be used for the NCAA Division I Championships in November (LaVerne Gibson Course). The women’s 6K is scheduled to start at 11 am.

The women will enter the meet ranked ninth in the West Region, which is the best ranking ever in school history. The 49ers will get a good test of where they stand nationally as some of the top teams in the country are expected to run this weekend.

“Pre-Nationals is a real pressure cooker that quickly separates the best teams in the nation from the very good programs,” said Distance Coach Matt Roe. “Top to bottom there will only be strong schools in this meet and we will find out quickly where we stand and what we need to work on.”

The 49er women are coming off a fourth place finish at the Stanford Invitational two weekends ago where four individual runners had times that were good enough to place them in LBSU’s all-time top-10. Meredith Kramon broke her own school record (21:13.9) with a time of 20:52. Ludi Valdez finished with the third fastest time in school history at 21:34, followed by Jenessa Botello who ran the fourth fastest time at 21:36. Kristina Wilson finished with a time of 22:07, which placed her seventh on the charts. Nicole Blalock and Missy Barclay will join those four at Pre-Nationals to round out a solid 49er squad.

“We have had good preparation up to this point in the season,” said Roe. “If we run hard and stay within ourselves, we have the potential to pull off upsets against some of the country's better teams.”

Long Beach State University Athletics

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