Sept. 11, 2009

The Santa Clara cross country teams will hop on the Bronco Athletics new bus, dubbed `the victory bus', early Saturday morning for a quick to trip up to the state capital to run in the Hornet Invitational in Sacramento, Calif. SCU is expected to run both full squads after running smaller teams last weekend in San Francisco.

"Sacramento State will be another opportunity for our young team to test themselves in competition," said Bronco head coach Tom Service. "For us to be successful in 2009, the concept of running as a "pack" becomes even more important. Although this is constantly emphasized, it is an important objective for Saturday. We are currently in a very tough phase of our training program. As expected the team is tired but this race serves as a good "benchmark" for the Championship season in late October and November."

Team Co-captain Stephanie Wilson, opens her 2009 campaign this week. Wilson was All-WCC last fall and finished 10th at Sac. State in 2008.

"We look for her to mix it up with the leaders at Granite Regional Park on Saturday and compete for the win," said Service.

On the men's side, it will be the 2009 opener for junior All-WCC runner Robbie Reid and Bronco associate head coach Felipe Montoro is looking for big things from the Los Altos native.

"Robbie has put in a great summer of training and is in the best shape of his life," said Montoro. "A few of the guys have been running with him in workouts, so I am interested to see if they can stay with him on Saturday as well. The race this weekend will serve as a gauge of our team's current fitness and give us valuable information on what to work on the rest of the season."

Last weekend the team's main objective was to run even or negative splits, to run as a pack, and lastly to gain experience at the 8k distance for SCU's youthful team. The young guys, with a little help from junior Chris Sampson, were able to execute that race plan very well.

"The race this weekend is another opportunity to prepare for the post season in a race environment," said Montoro. "We will again be focused on working together and moving up throughout the race. It will also give us an idea of who we will be running at Stanford on the 26th."

"The post season are the only meets that truly matter, but you must also be prepared to perform well throughout the regular season. This week we continued putting in high volume training and touched on our first anaerobic work of the season," said Montoro.