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A young cross country squad locks and loads or season
By Jim Gleitman
Assistant Sports Editor

For the men’s and women’s cross country teams, this upcoming fall holds plenty of excitement and high expectations.

Coming off a second place finish in the ACC tournament, the men’s team returns senior Nathan Sisco, who will attempt to defend his ACC title.

The women’s team will be loaded with talent and enthusiasm as both 2001 NCAA automatic qualifier sophomore Anne Bersagel and 2001 NCAA All-Southeast region member senior Risa Rutland return to the squad.

Both teams possess youthfulness, which according to assistant director of Track and Field, Gary Sievers, might be a weakness.

"We’re young; we’re untested, so that’s a little bit scary. Out of the seven that competed for us at nationals, two are back," Sievers told WakeForestSports.com. "But we redshirted some freshmen last year and we’ve got a good group coming back. As the year goes on, we will get better."

Of course having Sisco wearing the old gold and black sure helps.

"Nathan Sisco, who was the individual champ for us last year at the conference championships, is definitely are number one guy back," Sievers said. "We’re giving him more of a break this summer because he just had a long year last year. He will start slow, but obviously he’s the ACC returning champ, so he’s our number one guy."

Also back after a year off will be senior Mike Altieri. During the 1999-2000 cross country season, Altieri won the N.C. Intercollegiate Championships, the Winthrop Invitational and took 12th at the ACC Championships.

"Mike Altieri, who was our number one runner a couple of years ago, is back on the team now and running well," Sievers said. "I think as the year goes on, Mike will get better."

The women will certainly have plenty of talent to choose from as director of Track and Field Annie Schweitzer-Bennett has two seniors, seven juniors, six sophomores and five freshman filling the roster. The challenge will be orchestrating the top seven runners to perform on the same day.

"One of the expectations is that we felt like we didn’t have as good a year as we were capable of last year," Schweitzer-Bennett said. "I think we had more talent than we totally got out of everybody. That’s our main goal, to get seven young ladies up and running. We will have a lot to choose from but we want to get seven hitting on the same day."

Though both teams brought in a smaller recruiting class, each feels the talent pool is very deep. The women’s team has four incoming freshmen and Schweitzer-Bennett is pleased with their potential.

"Our freshmen coming in are a smaller class than usual, but we think Ashley Dunnigan and Erin Franklin will do a great job," said Bennett. Joining them will be transfers Lisa Gibb and Anna Sherman.

The men’s squad only has two incoming freshman, but Sievers red-shirted three runners from last season.

"What we’ve got is a bunch of freshman who didn’t compete last year," Sievers said. "Andrew Ice is definitely in there, so is Kevin Jones, Sean Stevens, Brandon Bartholomew, Brian Smith ... I think they can have an immediate impact on the program."

Both coaches are preparing for their respective seasons differently as Sievers wants to run limited squads in early meets and Schweitzer-Bennett plans to run a full squad.

"We start off in Boone and this is probably the first time I’m going to run a full squad," Schweitzer-Bennett said. "I’ve never done that before."

The men plan on using the first couple of meets as learning and teaching experiences. "It really doesn’t do anything for us to be beating our brains out on the courses early," Sievers said.

"Those first couple of meets, we will train through them and we will run them at a necessity and nothing more."