UPCOMING SEASON LOOKS BRIGHT FOR PLNU CROSS COUNTRY

PLNU Women’s Cross Country begins a new era of competition on Saturday when the Sea Lions race in their first meet with Landon Bright as Head Coach.

Bright, a PLNU Men’s Cross Country alumnus from 2009, spent eight years as the Cross Country Head Coach at Bob Jones University before returning to his alma mater last year as Point Loma’s Associate Head Coach.

His promotion to Head Coach was announced on July 6, as longtime Head Coach Jerry Arvin remains at the helm of the PLNU Track & Field program.

“It’s been pretty smooth,” Bright said of his transition to Head Coach. “The team has been very welcoming so that’s made it easy on my end. I feel that they’ve gotten used to me and how I do things, so it’s been good.

“I definitely have a better feel for how I can set the women up for success in terms of training.”

One way he plans to do that is not overtraining. Bright had his team arrive to campus a little later than normal, in mid-August, before competing in its first meet on Saturday.

“We’re training well and I haven’t wanted to over-do it at all, so we’ve just been keeping it consistent,” Bright said. “We’re starting racing a little bit later this year, so we’ve been focusing on consistent, quality training and wanting to set them up well for later in the season.

“The schedule for conference and regionals got pushed back two weeks, so we’ll be racing two weeks later regardless. I just felt that last year with some of the injuries we had, I wanted to just focus on training and not be overly concerned with racing early in September.”

Since their arrival to campus, Bright has been impressed by what he’s seen.

“It was a good camp, I was pleased with it,” Bright said. “I just felt like we were consistent and it was really positive all the way around. We were able to get out and run in different places that we don’t have time to do during the regular school day, and got a chance to bond.”

Part of why camp has gone so well is the team is healthier so far this year.

“As a group and we’re healthier than last year when we had a lot of injuries and freak things,” Bright said. “Our one through 10 are pretty healthy and I’m hoping to keep it that way.”

Roster

Point Loma enters the season with a large roster of 22, including 11 who maintain freshmen eligibility. Not a single Sea Lion is a senior athletically.

“We’ve got a great group of freshmen,” Bright said. “They’ll take a little bit of seasoning but they’ve come in wanting to compete.

“Early on it’s looking five of our top seven are probably freshman. Our older runners, the upperclassmen, will close that gap a bit. But we’ll try to keep them healthy and in control, just focus on what we need to do day-to-day and then later on we’ll start to build upon that.”

Even with the young roster, PLNU does return six of its nine finishers at the conference meet a season ago, led by Third Team All-PacWest selection Aubrie Nex, who placed 20th at the PacWest Championships in a time of 24:01.5.

“We have some individual runners who I think can do well,” Bright said. “Aubrie Nex should be up there in the conference meet and regional meet. It would be nice to have her competitive and shooting for a nationals spot.”

In addition to Nex, from the conference meet PLNU also brings back Faith Rocha (42nd – 26:00.6), Natalya Gomez (45th – 26:23.5), Jenna Bernath (54th – 27:04.6), Luca Burns (55th – 27:05.4) and Tori Michaelian (67th – 28:56.0).

Bright also highlighted returning athletes Taylor Wagner and Sarah Pratt, along with incoming freshmen Ryley Burns, Sydney Stevens, Elizabeth Satterlee, Maddie Reeves, Bree Gentry and Grace Pohl.

Schedule

Point Loma, picked to finish sixth in the PacWest Preseason Poll, begins its 2022 season at the Cougar Challenge on Saturday at 9:15 a.m. That race begins a stretch of five-straight weekends during which the team will compete.

PLNU is also scheduled to race at the Charles Bowles Invitational in Salem, Oregon (Oct. 1), Manny Bautista XC Invite in San Diego (Oct. 7), Highlander Classic in Riverside (Oct. 15) and the NCAA D2 Pre-Nationals Invite in University Place, Washington (Oct. 22).

“We want to race well later in the season,” Bright said. “The Seattle Pre-Nationals meet is where the national meet is at. It’s not necessarily why we’re going, but it’ll be good to stack up with some good competition there to see where we’re at. I’m looking forward to that.”

The team’s first-five meets serve as a precursor to the PacWest Championships on Nov. 5 in San Leandro. Point Loma placed sixth in the conference last year before finishing 17th at the NCAA West Regional.

“I want to improve upon our conference and regional finish from last year,” Bright said. “I want to improve upon that and I think we will.

“Once we get to regionals, I think we can beat a couple of those teams if we stay tight and get our number five ahead of their number four.”

The NCAA West Regional is scheduled for Nov. 19 in Billings, Montana with the NCAA Championships set for Dec. 2.