Mark Wetmore, now in his 21st season as head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, has never before been in this position: on the verge of winning a third-straight NCAA title with his men’s team.
In fact, few have. Colorado has been ranked No. 1 in the coaches’ poll all season. If they race to victory Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky, they will join highly exclusive company. Only four schools since 1938 have ever won at least three consecutive titles: Arkansas from 1998–2000 (and again from 1990–93, when it won four); UTEP from 1978–81; Villanova from 1966–68; and Drake from 1944–46.
Wetmore arrived to the site of the Mountain Region championships in Albuquerque early on Friday, some two hours before the start of the women’s race. The air is cool, but not cold. He dons tan aviator sunglasses, his graying hair pulled back into a short, taut ponytail, and paces slowly near the start line.
The task is this: Get the men’s and women’s squads through this qualifying race with as little drama as possible.
The question mark of the season for Wetmore has been what to do about junior Ben Saarel, who finished seventh overall at last year’s NCAA championships as Colorado’s No. 2 runner, behind current Colorado senior Ammar Moussa.
Up until Friday, Saarel hadn’t raced this year in a Buff uniform. An illness, combined with a surprisingly strong performance from true freshman John Dressel at the Pac-12 championships, left Wetmore debating whether he could redshirt Saarel for a cross country season, save his eligibility, and still keep the title streak alive.
“All along, the decision has been: Can we win the nationals without him?” Wetmore said. “And I decided that, with the national championship, a lot of people never have a chance to win one at all, so it’s a little bit a violation of the gods to hold out a pretty good guy. So we decided to plug him in.”
After the Rocky Mountain Shootout in Boulder in early October, where Saarel ran unattached, he struggled with an unspecified illness that left him sluggish and underperforming in workouts. The regional championships, his first race back, was his only chance to knock away the cobwebs before he competes at nationals on Saturday. But Saarel’s progression in the latter part of the season convinced Wetmore early last week to run him.
Ask the Coaches: Foamy Sweat.
“He ran pretty well for a guy in his first race,” Wetmore said. “He’s been in two nationals, so that shouldn’t be upsetting for him. This race will advance his fitness a little bit. And he’ll be better next week than he was today.”
Saarel admits that this was probably the most difficult regional race he’s run, but he said he wasn’t forced to dig too deeply. When you’ve been away from highly competitive racing for a few months, difficulties emerge.
“It was pretty tough,” Saarel said of his race. “Not a long way to go, but a couple of things to shape up before nationals. Mentally, kind of getting into it a little bit more, and maybe towards the end when it gets tough, relax a little bit more ... I’m just not used to the competition.”
On this day, though, Wetmore can rest easy. The men’s squad has won, defeating UTEP by 10 points, to snag one of the automatic qualifiers for NCAAs. Colorado’s top runners chatted easily to each other in the latter stages of the race, adhering to the plan of getting the spot without overextending themselves. Seniors Pierce Murphy—the consistent No. 1 runner for the team this season—and Morgan Pearson were Colorado’s top men, finishing sixth and seventh, separated by 0.2 seconds.
“We came out here ranked first, knowing it wasn’t going to be easy, but at the same time, we were trying to conserve as much energy as we could,” Murphy said. “And I think we did that relatively well.”
The women, meanwhile, defeated No. 1-ranked New Mexico—which was holding a couple of its top runners—by a single point. It was a moral victory, but one Wetmore and coach Heather Burroughs admit is not likely to carry through to Louisville, given New Mexico’s depth.
“I would say we are how we usually are at this meet, which is a little bit flat,” Wetmore said. “There are people who have to be at their best here, who are hoping to get through. And then there’s people here hoping to get through a little bit easily. And you never can.”
At this point, training for the runners is finished. The Buffaloes will shift into maintenance mode, having trained hard from the heat of summer through the Tuesday before regionals. The focus will be rest, light runs and a workout focused on short speed work this week. Otherwise, the title recipe calls for resting legs, staying hydrated, getting plenty of sleep, and visualizing the course.
This is especially important for Saarel. He is, by all appearances, prepared for Saturday. This summer, he laid down a strong base that should be the foundation to carry him through nationals. But from the Rocky Mountain Shootout in early October until the week before Pac-12s, he struggled in workouts because of an illness he declined to name.
“I got a particular sickness that takes a long time to come back from,” he said. “It’s just one of those things where you go into workouts not feeling good, feeling tired.”
Slowly, his workouts showed improvement. He joined the top group on occasion, but he admits he wasn’t strong enough to race at Pac-12s. So once more, Wetmore held him out.
“They played it smart; they played it safe,” Saarel said. “And at the end of the day, I’m really happy I’m racing. I felt like I shouldn’t be held out and that I could definitely contribute. It was a good mutual decision.”
The question is whether Saarel, who hasn’t had a season quite like this before, can contribute the way he did last year at nationals. For a team ranked No. 1 all season, there’s undoubtedly pressure to accomplish what so few have.
“We’ve been feeling the pressure the last two years,” Murphy said. “It’s just always there. We’ve felt it for so long it’s not that big of a deal. We know how we train, we know how to race. We have a lot of older guys up in the top five. We know what it’s going to take.”
