Women's Turn To Step To Starting Line

Saturday, September 29

Stanford, CA

9:30 AM

University of Washington

Stanford Invitational (Women)

Photo by: Red Box Pictures

September 27, 2018 | Cross Country

Stanford Invite Entries Live Results

By: UW Athletic Communications

SEATTLE – The big moments for the Husky women's cross country squad are still a month away, with the conference championships at the end of October and NCAAs three weeks after that. But this Saturday at the Stanford Invitational the Huskies will get to compete together for the first time and work through the rigors of the 6k race.

Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Maurica Powell says the 16th-ranked women's team has got "a couple weeks" under their belts now and while they are still in the midst of a training cycle, a large group will get a chance to compete this weekend.

"These women they did a full volume workout on Tuesday, and they're going to do another short workout prior to the race," says Powell. "They're not going to go in feeling good but the point isn't to go in feeling good, the point is to go in feeling a little beat up and have to work through that, so that's what we're planning."

For the 9:50 a.m. race at the Stanford Golf Course on Saturday, the Huskies will have 10 women entered. Senior Emily Hamlin, juniors Kaitlyn Neal, Nikki Zielinski, and Katie Rainsberger, sophomores Kiera Marshall and Allie Schadler, redshirt freshmen Sara Carter and Shona McCulloch, and true freshmen Madison Heisterman and Olivia O'Keeffe.

"We're not talking about outcomes at this point, we're talking about process," Powell says. "All the goals are how can we get better with the things that we do every day? The way that we build resilience, how we act when things aren't going the way we want them to go, how we act when things get really hard, how we talk to ourselves when things are challenging, those are the things we're working on. If we lay the foundation of doing those things properly and improve upon them every week we'll get to the outcome we want."

Powell credits Hamlin with helping establish a new team dynamic on a roster that includes several transfers, freshmen, and redshirt freshmen looking to make an impact for the first time.

"Emily is a natural leader because she leads by example and also has a good pulse on the personalities of her teammates," Powell says. "She has been incredibly welcoming of her new teammates, both freshmen and the transfers, and the process of having them all together here the last three weeks has brought them together as a group. I'm really pleased with the team dynamic and the culture is moving in the right direction so it's all really positive."

They key thing at this point in time is that the Huskies are healthy, something that was not the case over the summer, but Powell says the team "has done a really good job improving on a lot of little things that they needed to do to get healthy and stay healthy, and they're owning those things. Everybody's up and running and that's a good thing. I'm excited to put them in a competitive situation and watch them work through some of the things that are hard."