Cross Country Opens Season in Tulsa

August 29, 2014 | Cross Country

By: Athletics Communications

Hurricane Cross Country Festival
Aug. 30 | Tulsa, Okla. | Mohawk Park

NORMAN, Okla. -- The University of Oklahoma cross country teams open the 2014 season on Saturday, Aug. 30, at the Hurricane Cross Country Festival in Tulsa, Okla., with many returnees on the staff and team. The event will be held at Mohawk Park with universities running first, followed by high school races divided by eligibility class and gender. The final events of the day will feature races for junior high boys and girls.

The men will run a four-mile race at 8 a.m. immediately followed by the women who will run a two-mile race at 8:30 a.m. Joining OU in the university men's division are Arkansas, Louisiana-Monroe, Oklahoma State, Tulsa and Wichita State. The women's division features Arkansas, Oklahoma State, Tulsa and Wichita State in addition to the Sooners.

This season will mark the second year at Oklahoma for head coach Jim VanHootegem and associate head coach Jason Dunn. The Sooners lost two student-athletes to graduation between both squads from last year. The OU men return seven lettermen while the Sooner women welcomed back six letterwinners. The results are rosters featuring several experienced runners with room for the addition of many new faces.

As the 2014 season begins, Dunn said the regionally fourth ranked men hope to compete at the NCAA Championship this year after missing out last year.

“We want to be competitive at the front of the conference and then get back to the national championships,” Dunn said. “In order for us to do that, we've got to have some guys that can maybe be in that position where they can be All-Americans in cross country, and I think we have a couple guys.”

For the women's team, coach Dunn said many of the returning student-athletes are more mature and have improved significantly from last year. “I hope this year we'll start to appear on the radar a little bit and get a little blip going. Then, people will start to notice that we're making some progress and, maybe by a year from now, we'll be ranked in the women's poll as well,” Dunn said.

Alex Deir, Allen Eke, Eric Graf, Will Hogston, Kyle Polman and Malcolm Wankel will compete for the Sooners. The men's squad goes into this season ranked fourth regionally and 28th nationally by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association. Deir, Graf and Polman earned letters for OU last season and the remaining runners, scheduled to compete, participated for OU in 2013.

Sitting out the first meet on the men's side are a pair of contributors from last year, junior Brandon Doughty and senior Abbabiya Simbassa, who finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in last year's Tulsa race.

It's a different story for the women as 18 women will be in the field representing the Sooners. They include Elena Arriaza, Morgan Baulier, Alysa Burchill, Sophia Fernald, Lauren Gibbs, Ashley Guidot, Madison Heidenburg, Abbie Mace, Ariel Mackey, Kelsey McKee, Jordan Norris, Chloe Peek, Bryce Perry, Hayley Redwine, Sarah Scott, Olivia Taylor, Brittany Tretbar and Belle Wallace. Arriaza, Guidot, McKee and Perry lettered in cross country last season. Eight of those running Saturday are true freshmen.