NCAA Division 1 West Regional at Stanford

Wow---What an amazing weekend!

We were blessed with the amazing opportunity to watch our oldest son race in the

NCAA Division 1 West Regional at

Stanford University

There were 172 of the West's top athletes competing at this weekend's competition. 

Here you see about half the field.

In the first photo you see Drew and standing behind him to the right, is the eventual winner, Lawi Lalang, a freshman whose home country is Kenya.

 Washington State knew going in they would need amazing races from all their athletes to secure a spot to Nationals next week, but they also knew it was within their abilities.

 Drew knew that he and his teammate, Todd, would be key in their position at 5th and 6th runners. 

Cross country scores top 5 runners with 7 runners being allowed to compete per team. 

First place scores one point and so on with LOW score winning.

6th and 7th runners are for tie breaking and also add points to other teams scores, by being in front of their scoring runners .

Here are Drew and two of his teammates early in the race.

 I love this picture with him looking to the side.

The west region features some of the best runners in the nation with the top two teams advancing automatically to nationals, and 13 at large positions across the nation.

With Stanford, Oregon, UCLA, Cal Poly, Portland and California,  Washington State knew they were in for a battle and were going to have to run tough races to get in the hunt.

Drew would race for a personal best, as would almost everyone of his teammates on this amazing day.

Drew would place 61st in a personal best time of 30:43 for a 10K for a 6th man on his team.   To put this in perspective, he ran 20 seconds faster than he did 2 years ago when he won his state meet and then did the whole race over again at the same pace.

 The improvement that Drew has seen is amazing and it was so fun to watch him run strong after his struggling last track season only to find out he was battling mono all season.








His teammates placed:
 14 Andrew Kimpel 29:46
 16  Jono Lafler 29:47
 33 Justin Englund 30:14
 41 Todd Wakefield 30:21
 45  Andrew Gonzales 30:24
 61  Andrew Jordan 30:43
 65  Lee George 30:47

















Then they would wait on pins and needles for the scores.

When they started reading scores and these guys who had placed 6th last week at the Pac 12's were getting pretty excited as they heard:


UCLA   6th



Then.....

Oregon   5th

And their reaction to

WASHINGTON STATE 4TH!!!!!

One happy group of guys.

And we found out yesterday that 4th was good enough for one of the at large positions, so they are headed to nationals next week in Indiana.

For the first time in many years Washington State will be represented at nationals by their cross country team!

Congratulations men---we are very proud of all you have accomplished this year.

You can see full results here   http://www.gostanford.com/sports/c-xc/stats/2011-2012/west_men.html

and at this site http://www.gostanford.com/sports/c-xc/stats/2011-2012/west_men.html  you will find and article as well as an interview with his coach and top runner.

Also here is a short video from Flotrack  http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/240454-NCAA-D1-XC-West-Region-2011/video/515433-Mens-NCAA-West-Regional-2011-Race-Highlights  You can see Drew at about 55 seconds into the video on the left hand side in the red.