The Virginia men's and women's cross country teams will compete at home for the last time this season today as they host the Cavalier Open at Panorama Farms. The race is sandwiched between last week's ACC Championships and next weekend's NCAA Regional meet. Because of the scheduling, coach Jason Vigilante will rest most of the teams' top runners.
The race will provide the teams' younger and more inexperienced runners with the opportunity to showcase their talents and demonstrate to Vigilante their potential to replicate the program's recent success next season. That will be a difficult sell to make, as the No. 21 men's team is coming off an ACC Championship race, during which its top two runners finished first and second for the second consecutive year, while the No. 12 women's team placed second overall - the program's best finish in nearly two decades.
The race "is going to be a great opportunity for people who won't be competing at the regional meet and perhaps didn't compete at the conference meet to continue to cut their teeth and stabilize the program for years to come," Vigilante said. "I'm really looking forward to ... finding out if the people that are going to run at the Cavalier Open are going to do the things that we will need to be competitive in the upcoming years."
The race also will help several Cavaliers who have not competed all year to keep their legs fresh. The change of pace at Virginia can be a difficult adjustment for runners who competed every weekend during high school. Although today's race will not factor into Virginia's NCAA hopes, it will help various runners maintain a competitive mindset.
"It definitely helps to keep us moving, keep our legs moving," junior Chelsea France said. "You never want to be out of racing for too long and start getting dry off of the whole racing atmosphere. I think it's very important as a team to race to our fullest ability and see what it feels like so we can gear up for the future."
With one eye on the future, Vigilante said he is focusing on the individual improvement of each runner, a sentiment expressed by his runners, as well.
"We're just going to use this race to condition and see what the atmosphere of cross country is really like," France said. "The whole focus [today] is to go out there, compete and see how competing cross country feels. Then we'll be able to use that and have the confidence to be run stronger in later races"
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