Ready for the Conn. College XC Invite

The UConn men's cross-country team will be traveling to Waterford Saturday for their third meet of the season.

"This race had to be 6.5 out of 10," said Scott Johnson, a 5th-semester landscape architecture major who placed third in last week's UMass Invitational. "Not really threats. However, the most important goal for this race was to see how we could have done as a team and not so much about personal performances."

"This young team still has a big gap to close as they learn how to establish running as a team," said assistant coach Rich Miller. "This meet will be another good opportunity for the less experienced guys to step up."

The top four runners from last week's meet will not be competing this weekend as they prepare for the New England Championships. These runners are Will Sanders, Scott Johnson, Nick Aguila, and Jordan Magath. After three weeks of well-deserved rest, Michael Rutt and Brian Gagnon will join the team hoping to get back into the å"Well my outdoor track and field season was a lot different than normal," Rutt said. "After the USA championships in the end of June, I competed for two more weeks. After that, coach wanted me to take a good amount of time off from running completely. So when I started back up, my endurance was nowhere near where I needed it to be. Coming into the school year I've only been training hard for about a week. Throwing myself into one of the first 2 meets wouldn't have really benefited me too much because my body wasn't quite ready to race."

Despite not having many of the top runners compete, the Connecticut College men's cross country team will have a lot of ground to cover after losing their top runner Brian Murtagh to graduation. Brain Murtagh was a cross-country national qualifier and an All-American in track and field.