Nov. 11
November 11, 2009
Ms. Mae Ella Marie Carlos
November 13, 2009
Early on this season, Nicholls’ women’s cross-country head coach Matthew Esche knew his team was special.
His girls’ sixth place finish in the Southland Conference has earned the team the respectability it longed for as former bottom dwellers of the conference.
Through the team’s dedication this season, they have climbed to 11th in the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association’s South Central Region rankings.
Esche gave all the credit to his girls for striving to achieve their goals.
“Every single one of these girls has done a phenomenal job of staying in shape and doing the little things,” he said. “The more consistent at training you are, the better off you are going to be. Consistency is key. If you can get eight to 12 weeks of consistent training, then you’ll be consistent during the season.
“The girls are more comfortable at a faster pace and you can tell that they are actually getting better,” he added.
They capped off the conference with their highest finish in school history – sixth – and junior Lauren Jones posted the program’s first ever All-Southland Conference individual finish by clocking in with an eighth-place time of 21:37.
“The goal of the meet was to be in the top four,” Esche said. “We felt we had a good shot at it today, but you have to give credit to the other teams who ran very well also. To finish tied for sixth with Lamar isn’t the worst thing considering we were 11th last year and that this is the best finish in school history. If we look at the big picture here, our girls can be proud of what they did.”
The success of this team started from week one, when freshmen twins Dakota and Brea Goodman finished in the Top 5 and junior Jones finished in the Top 10 at the Southern Miss Invitational on Sept. 4.
That performance put the team in the Top 15 of the South Central Region rankings.
Both Brea (third) and Jones (fourth) finished in the Top 5 the following week at the Mississippi State Invitational.
Jones and the Goodman twins managed another Top 10 performance the following week at LSU to help the team to secure a second place finish and their current 11th place ranking the team has held since then.
They solidified the ranking again Oct. 16 when the Goodmans finished in the top two positions to help the team earn its first victory of the 2009 season at the Southern Miss Open.
In only her first year with the program, Dakota Goodman admitted she set out to run a personal record this season, but never expected to be in the Top 5 and named Southland Conference Runner of the Week last week.
“It really makes me notice that I can really achieve the goals that I want to achieve,” she said. “I set really high goals for myself, but my main goal is to get Top 10 in conference.”
As a member of struggling Lady Colonel teams in the past, junior Kadi Whisnant credits the coaching and the team’s desire to lay a foundation for the turnaround.
“What we had before was a really small program but for us to take such a huge step, it really hit all at once,” she said. “It started when Coach Matt came in last December. Ever since then it’s just been big steps.”
When he took over the team, the coach said he knew they had the potential to be great, he just didn’t know how fast.
He hopes to use this team as the foundation to build the cross country program into one of prestige.
“Recruiting the next couple of years is going to be pulling girls at this level if not even higher,” Esche explained. “Saying ‘Hey, we can do this, here’s how we are doing it’ and see the success that we are having as a group. We’re not doing this with one or two individuals. You can’t make a cross- country team with that, you have to have a team.”
All that’s left of the 2009 cross-country season are regionals on Nov. 14. The coach hopes the team can finish off strong and make a statement about the future of the program.
A strong showing at regionals could become the turnaround the team set their sights on after the solid finish in conference.
Doing so will require the girls to remain committed, he contends.
“The leaf hanging on the tree … as the season goes on the leaves fall off … you want to be that last leaf holding on when it comes,” he said. “Our big goal is to keep the success and earn some reward to show people, ‘Hey this is what we did at conference, now here is what we did at regionals.'”
“I’d like to see Nicholls put on the map and that’s my big goal,” he added. “That’s basically what they are doing this year.”
Nicholls State senior Kadi Whisnant participates in a cross-country meet earlier in the season. Whisnant has been a member of the team for three years and credits coaching as the biggest difference in the cross-country team’s recent success. * File Photo / Tri-Parish Times
