After last season’s second-place finish in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference Championships, the coach of the Norwich cross country team said he believes that you need “to run faster than the second-place person” to get back to the GNAC Championship spot.
Coach Ramsey Pualwan, head coach for the cross-country team, has chosen one co-captain for the women’s team, Jackie McElligott, a senior English major. Pualwan also chose two co-captains for the men’s team, Tommy Malinowski, a senior from Jericho, Vt., and Michael Christopher, a senior from East Keansberg, N.J.
“The team motto is sportsmanship first, winning second,” said Pualwan.
To be in the number one spot, he said, “Each week I draft the practice for the week at the beginning of the week and send it to my captains because a large of portion of our team is in the corps,” said Pualwan. Each week he has different types of practices for qualified runners, injured runners or even freshmen in the corps who can’t leave campus.
So far into the 2010-2011 cross-country team has only had three races and none of them were conference races. Pualwan said, “Our conference run is at the end of the year and we haven’t run against any of the teams in our conference. It is difficult to say how we’re doing.”
Since about half the team is freshmen, Pualwan isn’t sure of his expectations for the season. “The freshmen have a lot to learn,” he said.