With all its starting lineup resting, the backups showed the Minnesota women’s cross country team signs of what they hope are things to come Saturday with a second-place finish at the St. Olaf Invitational.
“We gave a pretty good effort,” coach Gary Wilson said after the race. “It’s not a fast course and it wasn’t that much of a problem for us.”
Wilson also said that the running “was not good” for the first mile to mile and a half of the trek.
Resting their top runners for this weekend’s 200-team Roy Griak Invitational, the Gophers reserves finished second with 84 points. St. Olaf won the meet with 29 points.
Senior co-captain Gena Johnson led the maroon and gold finishing in 19:39, good for 12th place. Sophomores Tanya Prince and Jenny Moylan finished in 15th and 17th place, respectively, while freshman Lindsay Feder placed 19th. Junior Rachel Domenichetti rounded out the scoring for Minnesota, finishing 21st.
Wilson said that he was pleased with the running of his B-squad.
“It’s a situation where they know their time is going to come to be in the top group,” he said. “The young kids showed a lot of promise. It shows that we have depth, and that’s nice to see.”
Wilson also touched on the fact that joining a college team with a national ranking — the Gophers are ranked 23rd — can sometimes be overwhelming for young runners.
“It’s getting the kids into races like this one that they say to themselves, ‘My time will come.'”
The Gophers will be back home Saturday, at the Roy Griak Invitational at Les Bolstad University Golf Course. The event will begin at noon and will feature a number of top NCAA schools, including top-ranked BYU. A total of 10 top-25 teams will be at the meet.