IU cross country teams travel to Lehigh University

IU Coach Ron Helmer will travel with the men’s and women’s cross country teams to compete in the Lehigh Paul Short Run at 10 a.m. Saturday in Bethlehem, Pa.

Saturday’s race is named after Paul Short, who was a four-sport athlete at Lehigh University and became a member of the Athletics staff in 1938. Short passed away Nov. 17, 1967, at the age of 57.

The Lehigh Paul Short Run is staged every year in October in remembrance of him.
There will be 12 men and 11 women competing for the Hoosiers Saturday.

The women will start the meet by running a six-kilometer race. The men will be running an eight-kilometer race starting at 10:10 a.m. with a staggered start.

Helmer said the team is prepared for this weekend and he is confident in how the runners have been training.

“We trained really well,” Helmer said. “The challenge that I knew we were going to have with a bunch of young people is that we need to translate training into racing, and we have an opportunity this weekend to do that.”

Helmer classified this weekend’s race as a high-level meet. The team is more concerned with beating the competition and less concerned about the actual time in which it finishes the race.

Two teams the Hoosiers are looking forward to competing against are Georgetown and Villanova. Senior Erica Ridderman said because they have only raced smaller schools and each other, they feel like they have something to prove this weekend.

“I know there are nine teams who are ranked,” Ridderman said. “Villanova, Georgetown and a few others. If we can get in there and be competitive it would be really good.”

Ridderman is anticipating that the race will start off at a fast pace. Although Helmer expressed that a specific time is not a priority, he said the Lehigh course is “a relatively fast course.”

The Hoosiers swept their last race at the Indiana Intercollegiate by winning both the men’s and women’s races, and they will be looking to have the same type of success Saturday.

“We’re really looking forward to a chance to compete against some really good teams and see what we can do,” Ridderman said.

Follow reporter Frank Bonner on Twitter @Frank_Bonner1.