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Josh McDougal hasn't lost many races in his four-year NCAA cross country career, but most of his losses have come here in Terre Haute. The Liberty University senior has come to the NCAA Championships here as a contender for the individual title four times, but in his previous three appearances, McDougal was 13th, fourth, and 27th, respectively.
This year, McDougal stuck with the lead pack through the early parts of the race. Around the 7k mark, he made a move to thin down the pack, which at that point included Oregon's Galen Rupp, Lopez Lomong of Northern Arizona, and Jacob Korir of Eastern Kentucky. Rupp covered that move and then pushed the pace himself, which thinned the pack down to two.
"I moved again in the second loop," said McDougal, but even though Rupp fell 10 or 15 meters behind, "I knew it wasn't over."
Rupp battled back, pulling even with McDougal again on the 500m-long finishing stretch and forcing McDougal to reach deep for one more finishing drive. Perhaps Rupp was a bit less rested after his long summer track campaign, or had used too much of his finishing speed catching up; perhaps McDougal remembered the 400 repeats which he said he'd been doing three or four seconds faster this year than ever before. Wherever it came from, it was enough to put McDougal ahead by one second, finally, for the win in his last chance at the cross country crown.
When it came to team scoring, though, McDougal was a non-scoring individual, so Rupp scored only one point for Oregon. Behind him, teammate Shadrack Kiptoo-Biwott was ninth, good for six points, and a trio of sophomores (Diego Mercado, Kenny Klotz, and Diego's twin brother Danny Mercado) wrapped up the scoring to give Oregon 85 points and their first men's team victory in 30 years. Behind them, third-ranked Iona brought in a tight pack (with just a 33-second 1-5 spread) to score 113 points for second; the Cowboys of Oklahoma State were a surprising third with 180 points.
Oregon coach Vin Lananna said his team, comprised entirely of juniors and sophomores, was "poised to create another chapter" in the Oregon story. "I asked them to be aggressive from the beginning. Winning or not winning was less important. I told them what was more important was establishing the identity of this Oregon program. They're young, and they have even bigger and better things ahead of them."
Posted by Parker Morse at 6:37 p.m. | Tags: Race Reports, 2007 NCAA Cross Country