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MISHAWAKA— Cross Country is getting close to the to the NCCAA? Jordan Shoemaker and Jacob Ropp ran their second-best times of the season. We talked to the head coach of Bethel University Cross Country team Ryan Sommers and asked him a few questions about how he feels about that. When asked the question, “As a coach, what are you doing to get your athletes to run their best at the track meet tonight?”, Sommers said, “At the beginning of the year the athletes set a yearly plan and we get to stick to that yearly plan and get them running better by the end of the year, we go to the next step of their plan. We set goals what they want to get better at, and we try to accomplish those. It's about the training but the training is not just physical we do a lot of talking about focus principles and those deal with talking about mental, emotional, spiritual side and physical as well.”
Another question asked was, “Since the NCCAA Championships is approaching what do you want your athletes to achieve from this meet tonight?” Sommers said, “The goal is to always to continue to progress, so each meet you get better so at the end when you get to the championships time whether its Crossroads League Championships or the NCCAA championships you want to peak at that time we just take what is that next step, what the next phase to get the athlete where they need to be.”
The Pilots ended up placing twelve out of sixteen teams and the Pilots return to racing on Saturday, October 26 in the NAIA Great Lakes Challenge in Grand Rapids Michigan at 11:00 am.
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