The Rowan women’s cross-country team put together another strong outing in their second meet of the season, placing first overall on Friday, Sept. 9 at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Cross Country Championship in Belmont, Pennsylvania. This continues their hot start to the season, as they placed second overall in their first meet at the Stockton Invitational. 

Four of the top ten overall runners were Profs, with junior Anna Sasse placing second overall, senior Mia Guerra fourth overall, freshman Allyson Wernik seventh overall, and senior Amanda McNally ninth overall.

Sasse has started the season strong, finishing second overall in both of Rowan’s first two meets. She is motivated to get over the hump and finish first in the Profs’ next meet on Sept. 23.

“Finishing second is a barrier I will work to overcome, especially since I came in second to the same girl both times,” Sasse said.

Wernik finishing seventh overall marks her second top-ten performance of the season. The freshman has a great attitude in her first season, as she is trying to put the least amount of pressure on herself as possible and just wants to win and have fun.

“Going into this season as a freshman, I tried to put the least amount of pressure on myself,” Wernik said. “To me, if you have fun in this sport you’re going to do well.”

Head Coach Derek “Ringo” Adamson is very satisfied with his team’s hot start, especially since they were missing some of their strongest runners at Belmont.

“The fourth man, fifth man, and sixth man weren’t even in the race,” Adamson said. “We got freshman Allyson and others stepping up.”

Despite being satisfied with the first two meets, Adamson is looking to take everything day-by-day and get the team better and ready for November. 

“I want to get the team ready to be studs in November,” Adamson said. “We don’t want to be studs in September and duds in November.”

Adamson feels the team is all-in on winning and is hungry to do the best they possibly can.

“This team is like a big bunch of pencils,” Adamson said. “If you were one little pencil, I could just break you easily, but if I keep adding more and more pencils to the pile it’s hard to break.”

This team definitely has a lot of “pencils” in the pile and is already hard to break with their fantastic start to the season. They will look to continue that on Sept. 23 at Dickinson.

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