UCLA Sports Information Paul Muite will compete in a meet against Stanford this weekend.
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
By running slower than expected, Scott Abbott may have ended up helping his team.
Plagued with a bad back, the senior captain, who had been the No. 2 man on the Bruins’ cross country team in the squad’s first two meets, was the fourth UCLA runner to hit the finish line last Saturday at the Sun Dodger Invitational on the Lincoln Park course in Seattle.
UCLA, however, received an unexpectedly strong push from its third and fifth scorers and came in third at the meet with 63 points, placing behind only Washington (41 points) and No. 10 Michigan (58).
“I didn’t have my best race,” Abbott said. “I’ll take the blame for us not beating Michigan. But we had a good team race. The guys did what they had to do.”
While seniors Bryan Green and Paul Muite cleared themselves of the Bruin pack midway through the race to climb their way toward the leaders, Abbott was carrying the back end of the UCLA scorers.
About three miles into the race, true freshman Jon Rankin, much to his surprise, found himself near Abbott. A half-mile later, he was right on him.
As had been the case in his first two collegiate races, Rankin hesitated at this point. In high school, he had never been in a race longer than 5 kilometers and was unsure if he could make a move without crashing before the end of the 8,000-meter run.
Then suddenly, Rankin heard Abbott say something to him.
“Go for it,” Abbott told him. “Don’t be afraid.”
“That kind of woke me up,” Rankin said.
And with that, Rankin, a 4:10 1600m runner as a high school senior last spring, blasted his way through the flat terrain. He moved up well, covering the circuit in 24:49.4 for 18th place.
“I really liked the flat course,” he said. “I didn’t have to worry about hills and stuff.
“With every race, I’m gaining a little more confidence. A lot of it is because the team has taken me in really well.”
Among UCLA competitors, only Green (seventh, 24:33.5) and Muite (ninth, 24:36.6) were faster than Rankin that day.
Abbott, meanwhile, struggled in at 25:01.1 for 26th, but managed to tug along junior Andrew Wulf, who was the Bruins’ fifth and final scorer at 30th place (25:05.4).
Junior Justin Patananan (37th, 25:21.7), senior Mason Moore (41st, 25:28.0), sophomore Phil Young (46th, 25:37.9), junior Martin Brix (55th, 26:13.1) and senior Jonathan Lee (73rd, 27:30.1) were the other UCLA finishers.
Mark Pilja of Michigan was the contest’s individual winner in 23:52.0.
“I was happy with the result,” said UCLA head coach Eric Peterson. “But this isn’t as well as this team can run.
“Mason Moore and Justin Patananan are a little off, but thankfully, they’re closer in practice to where we’ll want them to be at the end of the season.”
Peterson added that he was pleased that his team got to run on the Lincoln Park course, which will be used for the Pac-10 conference finals.
The next stop for the Bruins will be Palo Alto, where they will compete at the Stanford Invitational Saturday. In addition to the host Cardinal, UCLA will face other West Region powers in Washington, Cal State San Luis Obispo and UC Irvine.
Peterson was encouraged by his squad’s performance last week at the Sun Dodger, but he is warning his athletes not to get ahead of themselves.
“We can’t think about jumping in the rankings,” he said. “We lost to Washington and lost to Michigan. We were close, but we’re still behind them. This is just the starting point.
“We need the guys to concentrate on consistency. We’re finally starting to look like a cross country program.”