Harriers tops in state and ... not satisfied?

JONESVILLE - Rain and overcast skies welcomed runners from across the state to the Michigan Intercollegiate cross country championships in Jonesville on Friday.

The Michigan women's team won its 13th team championship in the 14 year history of the event. Instead of celebration, the Wolverines' post-race mood was more like the gloomy weather that enveloped southeastern Michigan.

"It was an okay performance, but we've done a lot better in the past," Michigan coach Mike McGuire said. "The weather was bad, but this was typical cross-country weather, so that's not an excuse for how we ran."

Once again, the Wolverines were paced by junior Lisa Ouellet. Michigan's top runner cruised to a second-place finish overall with a time of 18:30 at the Mill Race Golf Course. Like her coach, though, she was not pleased with her effort.

"I'm disappointed with my performance," Ouellet said. "Second place is fine, but it's just the way I ran today. You can't perfect every race, but I just didn't have it today."

One ray of sunshine for the Wolverines was sophomore Jeanne Spink, who ran the finest race of her young career and finished fifth. Both her coach and teammates had high praise for her strong showing.

"Jeanne Spink really bailed us out today," McGuire said. "That was the best race she's ever run."

"Spink ran great today," Ouellet added. "I really think that this could be her coming-out party."

For her part, Spink was quite modest about her successful performance, attributing her results to having a good mental focus prior to the race.

"I guess I just had the right mind-set today," Spink said. "This was a tough course, but I was finally able to run the way I've been practicing. I'm only hoping to get better as the season continues."

The Intercollegiate provided an opportunity for some of the smaller schools in the state to compete with larger Division I programs. For example, Michigan Tech, a small Division II university in the Upper Peninsula town of Houghton, traveled roughly 11 hours to compete against teams like Michigan and Detroit-Mercy.

"Western, Eastern and Central all competed well," McGuire said. "This is a good meet, because lots of high school coaches from around the area bring their teams to watch us run."

With this meet behind them, the Wolverines are now only three weeks away from the Big Ten Championships at Penn State, a fact that McGuire was well aware of.

"We won this meet, but we didn't move forward in our progress," McGuire said. "Nobody should be patting themselves on the back because we won. We've got a home meet next week, and then we're off for a week before the Big Ten meet, and we've got a lot of work to do before we go to State College."

10-11-99