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All year Rowan has been preparing for this stretch of races. The message all season has been to take it race by race, growing and preparing for the postseason.
The Profs conquered their first challenge of the postseason, winning their first New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) title since 2012.
Now Rowan, ranked for the first time in the region this season, will look to have another big day in New York when they compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Atlantic Regionals.
The regional race is a lot different than the previous NJAC Championship race.
“NJAC in a way, that’s a speed type race,” Head Coach Ringo Adamson said. “You got out and you let it all out. There’s not that many teams. [Just] establish your position and go with it.”
The Atlantic Regional is a much larger race that will feature more teams and therefore more competitors.
There’s a lot of different strategies Adamson and his team will keep in mind for a bigger race such as the Atlantic Regional.
“Here it is about positioning, but no one is simply going to run away from you,” Adamson said. “Here you could have 10, 12 girls coming in within one second or less of each other. It’s really about not being alone. Your mindset should be catching people, passing people, catching people and bringing your numbers down. It’s gotta be a whole team effort.”
The Brown and Gold have prepared all year for this race by competing in larger sized events such as the Inter-Regional Border Battle, and the Paul Short Run.
Those two races strategically taken by the team to help prepare them for the larger numbers in Regionals.
What Rowan could not prepare for all season is the weather they will encounter.
“I don’t know how much I can prepare them for the elements,” Adamson said.
Despite the impending bad weather that may even include significantly accumulated snowfall, Adamson is not too worried about how his team will fare, confident in his squad as he has been all season.
“They’re pretty energetic, they want it. I think good things might just happen … they’ve been getting ready for this for a long time,” Adamson said.
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