Coaches and runners of the Bakersfield College cross country program have a lot of enthusiasm and are preparing in full force for the upcoming season.
Pam Kelley has been coaching the BC women’s cross country team for 29 years and is preparing her team for the upcoming season.
“Running, running, and running,” said Kelley. “They’ve been training hard since July. Sept. 10 will be our barometer, so we can see where we are.”
Kelley’s expectations for the season are modest, as the team is young and consists of mostly freshman.
“We have all freshmen except for one. So it’s an all freshman team, which is kind of exciting, with a lot of different high schools represented, so we’ll have to wait and see,” said Kelley. “We have several number one runners from their high school which will help us.”
Margarete Martinez is one of the team’s most promising runners and is trying hard to be in the best shape she can be before the season starts, and she has high hopes for herself and the team.
“I’m hoping, for myself, to improve my times from my high school running career,” Martinez said. “And for the team I just hope that we can all succeed as much as we can together.”
Martinez has high regards for her coaches.
“Yeah, [the coaches] are really cool, actually, and I like them. I don’t dread coming to practice,” she said. “It’s good having them around. They’re good support.”
Dave Frickel is the men’s cross country coach and is getting his runners into shape for the upcoming season.
“Basically, I’m trying to get some of them used to the distance for the men. It’s a little bit longer distance,” said Frickel.
“They bump up from 3 miles or 5,000 meters [in high school] up to 4 miles, so the men run about a mile longer than high school, so we’re just trying to get them used to the idea.”
Frickel is moving right along with the task of conditioning the team.
“At the beginning of the school year we start training a lot more vigorously, you know, putting in more mileage and just go from there,” he said.
“We did a time trial last week, and I had the guys run the full 4-mile distance for the time trial.”
Frickel has certain expectations for his team to fulfill before the season starts.
“You know, a lot of these guys are trained throughout the course of the summer. So if they haven’t done a lot of training they’re kind of behind right now; some of them have a little bit more of an advantage than the few that came out a little bit later,” said Frickel.
“But basically they have to do some running during the summer to try and get themselves in better physical shape for the season. Hopefully they’ve done that.” Frickel said that the top five spots are wide open at the moment, and he will have to wait until the season starts to have a good idea of his top runners.