A Look Back: 2008 Messiah Cross Country Enjoys Stellar Season
Posted: 1/29/2009
More Cross Country news
For the Messiah cross country program, the 2008 season was one filled with successes both on and off the course.

Grantham, PA — Both the women’s and men’s cross country teams concluded exceptionally successful seasons this November, earning a conference championship (men) and a birth in the NCAA national championships (women). But the end-of-season results were simply a culmination of a season filled with notable personal performances and memorable team-building.

With the exception of the Penn State invitational — held against top-ranked NCAA Division I teams — and the NCAA meet, the women’s squad finished among the top five in every race, winning the Lebanon Valley College, Waynesburg College, and Messiah meets. Despite the disappointment of narrowly losing to Elizabethtown College for the conference crown, impressive personal performances abounded at the NCAA Mideas Regional meet as the women dominated the 44-team field, finishing third and earning an at-large bid to the 32-team national championship race in Hanover, Indiana. Each team member, both coaches and individual qualifier Francis Eanes, received free bags and gloves, all stitched with the NCAA championship emblem.

The men, for their part, followed closely in the women’s footsteps, winning their own invitational and taking home second in several others. With an impressive runner-up performance at the 41-team Lehigh Invitational, they found their groove en route to a first-ever conference championship (ironically, by defeating runner-up Elizabethtown). And though their seventh-place finish at the regional meet left them a little short of a trip to nationals, the race capped a season full of personal accolades.

Coach Dale Fogelsanger, in his 15th year of coaching at Messiah, was named the men’s Middle Atlantic Conference Coach of the Year. Seniors Jenny Kooser and Eanes complemented Fogelsanger’s honor, receiving female and male Runner of the Year awards for their respective individual conference meet victories. Rounding out the accolades, first-year runner Tyler Newhook and Mary Higgins earned MAC Rookie of the Year honors.

But results and awards found their beginnings long before the championship meets of November. Fogelsanger gathered fourteen women and fourteen men for the annual cross country camp, held the week prior to school starting. Besides the usual Captain’s run and Harrisburg River run, Fogelsanger took the team to Camp Eder, a rural Church of the Brethren retreat camp in Adams County, for a few days of off-road running in apple orchards, singing around the camp fire, and sleeping in (now-stationary) covered wagons.

As school began, the team continued to find ways of interacting with each other outside of daily practice. Both men and women held weekly Bible studies on Sunday nights, in addition to stopping by Fogelsanger’s house for several weekend evenings, the highlight of which was the Halloween party. Additionally, college President Kim Phipps invited both teams, along with members of the women’s tennis and volleyball squads, over to her new residence for a get-to-know-each-other evening of dinner and conversation.

Both varsity teams will graduate only one senior each, leaving a promising crop of underclassmen to build on the season’s stellar results. With three outstanding first-year runners, the women stand an excellent chance of repeating their NCAA championships run next year.

-Frank Eanes