{"id":20320,"date":"2023-10-31T17:26:41","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T01:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=20320"},"modified":"2023-10-31T17:27:09","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T01:27:09","slug":"cross-country-on-a-steady-pace-for-the-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/cross-country-on-a-steady-pace-for-the-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross country on a steady pace for the season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by: Jaylin Hardin | Sports Editor<\/span><\/p>\n

Western\u2019s cross country team is holding steady on course for this season. The team secured a pair of sixth-place finishes in San Francisco on Oct. 6 \u2014 following a pair of first-place wins at their home meet on Sept. 22.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senior, Caitlin Heldt, came in seventh place to bring the women\u2019s team to 144 points and secure the sixth-place win \u2014 Heldt completed the 6k race in 22 minutes, 0.4 seconds. For the men\u2019s team, Freshman, Konoa Blake, finished 28, completing the 8k race in 26 minutes, 3 seconds and bringing the team to 167 points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Heldt and Junior, Olivia Flack, had positive attitudes about their team\u2019s success and training environment.\u201cOur team is very competitive and I think we work very well together in practices,\u201d Flack said. This is Flack\u2019s second year at Western. \u201cThis is the first year overall that we actually have been able to have a big group during workouts,\u201d she also said. She feels it helps the team environment and fuels competitiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis year we\u2019re a lot more positive in what we say to each other and ourselves,\u201d Heldt added. She talked about how the team uses mantras and affirmations to remain positive. \u201cWe\u2019re more competitive this year, so we\u2019re always in packs and competing better than last year.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Heldt and Flack have goals to race in Nationals and to place high in the GNAC championship race in Anchorage, Alaska and the NCAA West Regionals, hosted at home at Western.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cZach is a great coach, he\u2019s really good at knowing where we\u2019re at and communicating with us,\u201d Flack said about their head coach Zach Holloway \u2014 this is his first year as head coach, after four seasons as Western\u2019s assistant coach.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very young, so I feel like it\u2019s very easy to talk to him and I feel like he understands us,\u201d Heldt said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Flack was also among the 21 cross country runners named for the GNAC All-Academic Honors. To receive this honor, athletes must have a grade point average of at least 3.2 and have competed on an official course during the 2023 season. Three students on the list had a 4.0 GPA: Juniors Josie Ackerman, Kaitlyn Kruse and Rami Dear \u2014 Ackerman and Kruse had both been on the honoree list the previous year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Contact the author at howlsports@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":20321,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1612,1614,1605,75,1613,1598,1608,1609,1610,1444,1611,684,1556,608,39],"class_list":["post-20320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-affirmations","tag-all-academic","tag-cross-country","tag-gnac","tag-gpa","tag-intercollegiate","tag-mantras","tag-nationals","tag-ncaa-west","tag-running","tag-san-francisco","tag-western","tag-western-oregon","tag-western-oregon-university","tag-wou"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}