The Illinois women’s cross-country team will have one last tune-up before the Big Ten Championships when it hosts the Illinois Open this Friday at the UI Arboretum to end its regular season.
“This is a great opportunity to see how much we have improved over the course of the season,” head coach Scott Jones said.
The Illini, who ran in last Friday’s Bradley Classic, will be running again this week, including sophomore Michelle Frigo and freshmen Megan Lemersal, Valarie Bobart, Kim Seger and Ellie Palacios. Practices this week have lowered in the volume of training due to the one-week gap between meets. The team was also split into two separate tracks based on who will be competing on Friday. Jones made individual needs more of a priority due to a shorter week.
The conditions for the meet will be much different from when the Illini opened the season in late August at home. The weather was sunny with a high of around 90 degrees while the forecast for this Friday is partly cloudy with a high of 49 degrees. Even with this, Jones wants his team to run faster and compete in races more than in the past.
The Illinois Open will not only be a good way to measure how the Illini compete with other teams from the state, but it will also be a big opportunity for the runners on the team who hope to join the roster at Big Tens next week. Jones said the competition has never been a problem with the team, and the runners will be the ones who decide if they will participate at Big Tens in West Lafayette, Ind.
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“For some people, it’s a chance to demonstrate that they should be traveling with us to the Big Ten Championships,” Jones said. “It’s up to each individual to show that they are able to compete at that level,”
Although the team is focused on the home meet Friday, the team as been working for next week’s meet all season.
“This is one of the major tests that we face as a team,” Jones said. “We look forward to competing in it when we assemble in the summer and train throughout the fall. It guides us all the way through.”
The team knows the importance that meets hold as the season moves toward an end and championship meets begin.
“These meets are more important and you have to prepare yourself,” sophomore Alyssa Schneider said.
The team, which started the season unsure of who its coach would be, has now grown closer under Jones.
“We really came together as a team much better than the past few years,” Schneider said. “Growing together confidence wise as well as running together.”
Michal can be reached at [email protected] and @bennythebull94
