Q & A With Behrend Track & Field Coach
Greg Cooper
What
are your thoughts on your team after beginning your season in
Florida and Myrtle Beach? Where do your feel your squad stands thus
far?
Our training in Florida was tremendous. We won't have
a solid week of training like that again for a few weeks with the
weather here, so that was irreplaceable. The team performed really
well in our meet at Coastal Carolina University. We had nine
athletes qualify for the ECAC championships and we had five school
records broken. The women have a young team, and while we don't
have a lot of depth in events, we have a lot of talent in the
athletes who are performing. The men are balanced across the board
with strong athletes in distance, sprinting, throwing, and jumping.
There is always room for improvement, and with two months remaining
in the season, I believe we will have that improvement, but we have
a solid team on both the men's and women's side going into the rest
of the season.
Who is performing particularly well
for the team right now?
Mike Ferraro and Doug Stevenson both qualified for
ECACs in the 100m dash and broke the school record with like
performances of 11.10 seconds, Bryson Hartzler did the same in the
high jump going 6' 4.75" breaking the record set in 2000, Ronson
Mazany qualified for ECACs in the triple jump, leaping 44' 6" and
Kevin Gorny had an impressive performance running 9:44.56 in the
steeplechase which broke his own school record by ten seconds, and
qualified him for ECACs.
For the women, Mandy Wehrle, running in her first collegiate outdoor meet, ran the 400m dash and broke the school record with a performance of 60.95 seconds breaking the record set in 2001. Kylie Swanson also broke a school record, pole vaulting 9' 0.25". ECAC qualifiers for the women were Virginia Rodgers-Owens in the 100m dash and the 4x100m relay where she was joined by Wehrle, Dana Turley and Kaisy Kafferlin, running 51.33 seconds.
Has anyone come back exceptionally
strong from the off season that was surprising?
Brett McLean and Earl Bass for the men have both been
impressive, performing at or above their best levels from a year
ago. Andy Iams may have had the most surprising performance on the
trip after missing the entire Indoor season due to injury, he ran a
24 second personal best for the 5000m posting a 16:15.47. After an
impressive cross country season, we knew he had it in him, but it
was great to see him step up and run that well right away.
Mallory Souleret lowered her 5000m time by one minute going from
indoors to outdoors and sophomore Dana Turley has started this
season off much stronger than last season. Of Turley's four races in
the meet, she ran three of them last season, and was far ahead of where
she started the season last year.
How does the conference look this
season? How do you think you will do against conference
competition?
The conference has been dominated by Christopher
Newport over the past few years. Last season Salisbury State from
Maryland stepped in and beat them in the women's competition. Our
top place was third for the women (2007) with those two schools ahead
of us. Our goal for both men and women is to crack the top two this
year. For the men, our conference has schools that are dominant in
distance, dominant in field events, and dominant in sprints. I
believe what can separate us is that we are pretty good in all three
areas, if our athletes can perform at their best when it counts, we
should be right in the mix.
What are your expectations for the
end of the season and championships?
We always make it our goal to qualify as
many athletes as we can for the ECAC championships. I feel that we
have some athletes on our team this year who can qualify for the
NCAA championships as well. When the school year ends, we will
still have three competitions remaining, and it's our goal to finish as
high as we can in each of those three competitions as a team and as
individuals. Until it happens, it will always be our goal to have
our first NCAA All-American.
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