The Cross Country Chronicles is in its third year at VMIKeydets.com, as head cross country coach Paul Spangler contributes a blog chronicling the 2010 season. 

Coach Spangler's Bio

The Cross Country Chronicles - Volume 2

The Cross Country Chronicles - Volume 1

Part 8 - November 30

Click here to read a recap of the men's team season, as Coach Spangler closes out the third volume of the Cross Country Chronicles.

Part 7 - November 23

Part 6 - October 21

For the men, App. State was probably our best race as a team this year, despite sitting out one of our #1 and #3 runner from Charlotte two weeks earlier, Felix Kitur and Ian McGinn. Ermin and Andrey led the charge running 25:21 and 25:28 for 8k. For Andrey, he bettered his lifetime best from 2009 that he set at the World Jr Championships in Amman, Jordan.

Freshmen Cabell Willis and Jordan White once again had solid races both running 26:20. Sophomores Jason Thorpe and Frank Van Valkenburg really stepped it up and ran a lifetime best of 26:39 and 27:02. For the men we placed 6th overall (177 pts), just 17 pts from beating Mississippi State and 34pts from beating the University of Kentucky. Would we have beaten Kentucky and Miss. State if we have raced Felix and Ian? Yes, without a doubt. Many people ask, “why sit out some runners if you would place better as a team if they ran”? Great question and here is the answer: In cross country, there is no season record or conference standings like it football, baseball, basketball etc. The success of our season is based on how we perform as a team at the Big South Championships and the post season NCAA Regional and National Championships.

As I have told my team in the past, we could win every meet leading up to the conference championships, but if we perform poorly at the Big South Championships and the post-season NCAA Championships then it would be considered a disappointing season. We did not race Felix as we do not want to over race him and for Ian, it was a sore achilles. Yes, they could have raced at Appalachian State and raced well, but there would be a good chance Ian would not be able to race conference and Felix would not run as fast come championship time. Our goal going into conference is a top three team finish. Both High Point and Liberty are going to slug it out for the team title, and we'll certainly be capable of taking advantage of any misfortunes either one of those teams might encounter over the next two weeks or on race day.

The women's team had another great race this weekend competing at Appalachian State in the Blue Ridge Championships at State Farm Fields. The women were led by Hannah Granger who placed 14th overall in 18:14 and freshman Tammy Cheung who ran a lifetime best by 33 sec with her time of 18:26.

The team placed 7th overall with 198 pts and just 16 points from a victory of the Univ. of Kentucky. For Tammy, it was great to see her finish ahead of many girls who dominated her in high school last year. Also steping up was sophomore Leah Schubel who had a 30 second improvement over the same course a year ago with her time of 19:24 for our 5th runner, and running a lifetime best was Dalton Kuhar who ran 19:25 for 5k for our 6th runner. We did sit out Jenna Moye who has been our #2-#3 runner this year due to a sore foot. Jenna has looked good in practice this week and will be ready to go come championship time. If she runs at App. State we, without a doubt, finish ahead of Univ of Kentucky and are in a virtual tie with Miss. State for 3rd place. Our goal, however, are not the races leading up to the Big South and NCAA Regional/National Championships. Yes we could finish higher in the races during the season and a victory over a nationally recognized program like UK and MSU would certainly help in recruiting, but our goal is to bring home the first-ever Big South Conference team title on Oct 30th. Standing in our way is Liberty, Coastal Carolina, and High Point. They say cross country is like poker, you need five good cards. We've been dealt a pretty good hand this season, and I feel confident about what we have going into next week's Big South Championships in Blacksburg, Va.

Part 5 - October 14

Click on the icon in the lower-right hand corner to expand the video.

Part 4 - October 5

Outstanding effort by the men's cross country team at the Charlotte Invitational this past Friday. The men came away with a 3rd place finish out of 22 teams and beat Clemson and Charlotte who was ranked 15th in the latest NCAA regional XC rankings. We did this while also sitting out one of our top runners, Andrey Dmitriev, who is coming off a sore Achilles.
 
The race saw Felix Kitur lead the men with Ermin Mujezinovic (pictured below, just above Jenna Moye) following just behind him. Both men ran an intelligent race going out in just under 5:00 at the mile and averaging right at 5:01-5:02 for the entire 8k. We had a larger than normal gap to our #3 runner as our main pack got out too slow going through the mile in 5:20 but did end up averaging around 5:13-5:14/mile. All the men came away from the race with lifetime best in just their second 8k at the XC season.

VMI Finishers:                                                    Team Results:
6th    Felix Kitur                       Jr    25:02            1.     Wake Forest        38
9th    Ermin Mujezinovic            Sr    25:08            2.    Virginia Tech        54
41st    Ian McGinn                   So    26:08            3.    Va. Military        121   
44th    Cabell Willis                 Fr     26:09            4.    Clemson            123
45th     Jordan White               Fr     26:09            5.    Charlotte            150
49th     Marshall Dalessandro    Jr    26:15            6.    Western Carolina    158
66th    Andy Eddleton              Fr     26:42            7.    College of Charleston    198
78th    Jason Thorpe               So    26:55            8.    Ga. State                 263
88th    Hayden Hodges             Fr    27:12            9.    East Tennessee State    269
118th    Frank Van Valkenburg    So  28:00           10.    Milligan              298
121st    Kyle Corwin                 Fr     28:13           11.    Lees-McRae        314

It was another outstanding effort for the women's cross country team at the Charlotte Invitational this past weekend. The women came away with a 5th place finish out of 25 teams with every athlete running a lifetime best. Sophomore Jenna Moye (above) was VMI's top finisher running a personal best of 18:14 for 5k. What was impressive is that we sat out our #1 and #2 from the Big South Preview race. Hannah Granger and Tammy Cheung had been sick earlier in the week, and even though they could have raced, I decided to hold them out and thus speeding up their recovery. Of the four teams that beat us, each had an NCAA ranking.

VMI Finishers:
28th Jenna Moye            So    18:14    25sec PR
37th Rebecca Sweeney    Fr    18:27     1:02 PR
50th Corinne Lariviere    So    18:43    36sec PR
60th Leah Schubel        So    18:53    16sec PR
69th Molly Western        Fr    19:06    1:03 PR
82nd Hannah Best        Fr    19:20    8sec PR
90th Dalton Kuhar        Fr    19:30    26sec PR
104 Katie Purpura        Fr    19:53    4:02 PR
115 Nicole Augins        Fr    20:04    24sec PR

I have found over the years at VMI that our freshmen women tend to make a huge jump in performance from their senior year in high school, more so than freshmen at other colleges. This is contradictory to what you tend to see at other schools and certainly what you would expect to see at a military school. Remember that the freshmen year at VMI is arguably the hardest first year of any college in the United States both physically and mentally.  Below is a list of our current freshmen and their high school personal best and current college best. Keep in mind that their college 5k PR was set in just their second race!

Name:                    High School    High School PR (2009)        Current College PR (2010)    Improvement
Rebecca Sweeney    Cosby            19:29                                18:27                                1:02
Molly Western        Cave Spring     20:09                                19:06                               1:03
Hannah Best          Louisa Co.       19:28                                19:20                               0:08
Dalton Kuhar         Fuqua                19:56                               19:30                               0:26
Nicole Augins         Western Branch 20:28                             20:04                               0:24
Katie Purpura        Yarmouth        23:55                                 19:53                               4:02!!

I have been asked many times how are our women improving so much? What is our secret? The secret, I believe, is something unique to VMI. For one the ratline can be both physically and mentally hard. This undoubtedly helps our freshmen become physically and mentally tougher and this carries over into their athletic performance. One aspect that is unique to VMI is all our freshmen live on the fourth floor of barracks. When they go up to their rooms they have to double-time it up the steps. This is an outstanding plyometric exercise that helps develop the stretch reflex properties of their lower leg muscles. In other words this makes them faster on the course and on the track.                  

Part 3 - September 27

This week, Coach Spangler checks in with his thoughts on the women's team and its dominating outing at the Big South Preview. You can click here to read the blog.

Part 2 - September 9

Sorry for the delay in keeping up with the Cross Country Chronicles. With matriculation week, preseason training camp, our home cross country opener and this weekend's Blue Ridge Relay, it has been pretty hectic around the office.

Last Friday we both the men's and women's teams opened up the season in dominating fashion. The first race of the year featured a two person relay with each member running 2x2mile-Men and 2x1.5 mile-Women. On the women's side the teams of Hannah Best-Hannah Granger and Jenna Moye and Leah Schubel tied for first place over all by posting a time of 37:44 for the 6 miles distance covered. Hannah Granger had the fastest individual total time of the day with 18:30 followed closely behind by Leah Schubel in 18:32. Freshmen Rebecca Sweeney was very impressive in her first college race finishing just behind Leah and Hannah for 3rd overall in 18:42. As a team we won the meet with a perfect score and did so without racing our #3, #4, and #5 from our preseason time trial.

The men looks just as impressive as the ladies with Ermin Mujezinovic (19:46), Cabell Willis (20:06) and Andrey Dmitriev (20:17) posting the top three fastest times of the day for their four miles of racing. Andrey Dmitriev teamed up with freshmen Jordan White to place 1st overall as a team with a total time of 40:46. It was great to see Andrey Dmitriev back at VMI as he took an extended Christmas vacation in Russia after the fall semester and missed the 2010 track season. I was particularly impressed with the performance of some of our freshmen and in particular Cabell Willis, Jordan White and Andy Eddleton. All three came in with impressive high school marks and they did not disappoint on Friday as they were our #2, #4 and #5 runners.

Comparing our performances on Friday to last year's results, both the men and women are much improved. On the women's side, even not competing ½ our women, we still would have defeated last year's team. With our women at full strength we would have dominated last year's team that eventually finished runner-up at the Big South Championships. We will certainly need that type of performance this year as Liberty and Coastal Carolina are much improved from last year as well. The men averaged 17sec per relay member faster than last year and that was without running Felix Kitur who has looked really strong in workouts. Will it be enough to finish top two as a team at the Big South Championships? That remains to be seen. As I have said before, this is the most talented men's team I have coached in my eight years at VMI.

Starting Friday is our annual Blue Ridge Relay. It is a 140-mile team relay on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Friday night we camp out at The Peaks of Otter and Saturday we'll be staying at the Doe Run Lodge and Resort. It is a great opportunity for the team to bond in addition to logging some quality miles up in the mountains close to 5000 ft.

Part I - July 2

Track season is now over, and it's time to get ready for cross country. Looking back to 2009, the women had an outstanding year with their history making runner-up finish at the Big South Championships and coming away with Runner of the Year and Freshman of the Year honors in individual champion Hannah Granger and 4th place finisher Jenna Moye. All three accomplishments were the first in the program's history. Looking ahead to the 2010 season, we return our top six runners from last year's squad.

With that, we once again had a very successful recruiting year with six girls making up the 2010 recruiting class for cross country. Leading the way for the class of 2014 is Tammy Cheung of Millbrook High School in Winchester, VA. Tammy ran 11:04 at the AA state championships just a few hours after splitting 2:18 on the 4x800m relay. To put that into perspective, as seniors in high school, Hannah Granger ran 10:55 and Jenna Moye ran 11:24 for 3200m. Tammy should certainly not only make an impact in our top five, but also the potential to make a big impact at the top of the Big South Conference. Making up the remainder of last year's Big South Runner-up team are sophomores Lindsey Carty, Leah Schubel and Corinne Lariviere. Lindsey had an incredible freshmen season improving almost 2 minutes on her 5k from the year before while Leah Schubel was right behind her improving right at 1 minute from high school. Coming off a hamstring injury during track, sophomore Corinne Lariviere will be counted on to add depth to, what should be, our most talented team in the history of the program. Other freshmen which will be counted on are Hannah Best, Rebecca Sweeney, Molly Western, Dalton Kuhar and Nicole Augins.

Of course when you return the nucleus of your varsity squad, you expect to move up in the conference, right? Liberty, last year's Big South Champion, also returns all of their varsity runners and signed an athlete at or near the same level as Tammy Cheung. Also, don't count out last year's 3rd and 4th place teams Coastal Carolina and High Point, who are talented and very well coached. The keys to success for us if we want to accomplish our goals for 2010 and have a shot at the title:
1.    Each athlete putting in the work over the summer.  
2.    The ability to avoid injuries during the summer and the fall season.
3.    An unexpected breakthrough performer on the lines of 2009 Lindsey Carty, Jenna Moye and Leah Schubel.

One big advantage I have found for our freshmen is the VMI Summer Transition Program. This is a voluntary program that allows incoming freshmen to attend VMI prior to the fall semester. It allows each student to take a college course and prepare for the physical demands that VMI will ask of them in the fall. It has been a great opportunity for our incoming freshmen to train together and push each other on a daily basis and, I believe, contributed to us finishing runner-up in the Big South with five freshmen in our top six.  Of our six incoming freshmen on the women's team, four will be attending STP along with Hannah Granger, Corinne Lariviere and Jenna Moye attending summer school during the same time.

With a young and talented team, 2010 is shaping up to be another exciting year. 

Note: A blog on the men's team is expected in the future weeks.