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Cross-country team starts ‘06 season strong
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The Boise State cross-country teams traveled to Nampa for their first in-state meet of the year on Saturday, Sept 9. Both the men and women’s teams showed their regional power as the men took first place in the team standings and the women took second.
Senior Ty Axtman edged out Bronco teammate Forrest Braden for the men’s title at the Northwest Nazarene Invitational. Axtman and Braden are expected to anchor the men’s team this season in Boise State’s push at a Western Athletic Conference championship. With both races being won by Bronco runners, track and field coach Mike Maynard has great hope that 2006 will be another strong year for BSU cross country.
“That was obviously not a super-high level meet, but there were some good runner there,” Maynard said. “For Ty and Forrest, who were literally thousands of seconds apart, they just raced right to the finish.”
Maynard oversees the track and cross-country programs at BSU, while David Welsh is actually the head coach of the cross-country program. Maynard has played a huge part in assembling both teams and knows as well as anyone how important both Axtman and Braden are to the school.
“You know Forrest has been kind of a franchise guy for us, as far as the things he’s done,” Maynard said. “He’s one of the greatest distance runners to come out of the state of Idaho. Then Ty, who’s just across the border from Washington in Spokane. To have both those guys, both in their senior year and running at that level is going to be huge for the team.”
On the women’s side things weren’t much different for the Broncos at NNU. Breanna Sande took top honors at the meet, solidifying herself as the top women’s team member for Boise State. Sande and Axtman were both named WAC cross-country athletes of the week for their performances in Nampa. Sande is a sophomore from Coeur d’Alene and rounds out a team of nearly all Idaho talent. As with the men, the women are showing that local talent is as good as any.
“We’ve got two foreign kids on the team, but everyone else is, if not from Idaho, definitely from the region,” Maynard said. “It’s important, we don’t want any great student-athletes to have to leave (Idaho) to be part of a top level program.”
While both teams are still in the early stages of their season, it is expected that the toughest competition remain ahead. The next meet for both teams will be in Seattle at the Sundodger Invitational on Saturday Sept 16.
Once conference meets begin the Broncos will be able to race up to nine runners at a meet with the top five earning points towards a meet’s final team standings. While the men’s team only has seven runners on roster, the women will be looking for nine out of eighteen runners to compete in conference meets.
Both teams remain far from where Maynard and Welsh expect them to be at season’s end. Unlike a true team sport, cross-country gives a coach much more responsibility to develop every individual runner. This focus on the individual can be the difference between a good team and a great team.
“We’re really all about working it towards the individual,” Maynard said. “We monitor and structure training around making the individual meet their best.”
Without any clear racing lineups yet, the Bronco coaching staff will have to wait to see if their championship goals are going to be met by this group of runners.
“You know it’s just a little early,” Maynard said. “A lot of teams are like us, we haven’t even competed all of the individuals that we think are gonna finally shake out in our top five. Until you finally see that starting lineup, so to speak, you don’t really know where they’re at."
Jake Garcin