Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
COLUMN: A Halloweekend of Champions
10/29/2023 5:51:00 PM | General, Men's Cross Country and Track & Field, Women's Cross Country and Track & Field
The CUSA Cross Country Title Sweep was the highlight of a very good weekend to be a Blue Raider
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — There's a real sense of pride in claiming a conference title at any time in collegiate athletics but having witnessed several in my time at Middle Tennessee, it hits differently when it's done before you've even had breakfast on a Saturday morning.
I presume the Cross Country runners under the leadership of Keith Vroman had some sort of breakfast before they hit the course in Bowling Green, Ky. for this year's CUSA Championships, but after watching parts of three MTSU wins the night before, I was just finishing smearing the cream cheese on my bagel when I pulled up the timing sheet and saw MTSU's men go 3-4-5-6 with their first four scoring runners.
When Carmelo Cannizzaro raced across just over one minute past Hillary Kimaiyo to take 20th, it didn't take long to do the math that MTSU had its first Cross Country title of the day before 10 a.m.
CHAMPIONS! 🏆#BLUEnited pic.twitter.com/VSbKJMRdd2
— Middle Tennessee XC/Track & Field (@MT_TrackField) October 28, 2023
The women weren't as dominant as a team, but were dominant up front, with Purity Sanga taking the individual title right around 10:30 a.m.
Purity Sanga is the 2023 CUSA Women's Cross Country Individual Champion with a time of 21:01.2! 🥇@MT_TrackField | #NoLimitsOnUs pic.twitter.com/4cRd0VKMb7
— Conference USA (@ConferenceUSA) October 28, 2023
And when Brooke Studnicki took 20th as MTSU's fifth scoring runner for the women, it was title number two in as many hours for the Blue Raiders.
"It's emotional to win both of them," Vroman said. "It's tough to do but we have done it three times the last five years. It is the hardest thing to do."
That winning feeling… 🤩
— Middle Tennessee XC/Track & Field (@MT_TrackField) October 28, 2023
#BLUEnited | @NCAATrackField pic.twitter.com/UKblquwNbb
I readily admit I know the least about Cross Country, and Track & Field in general, of all our varsity sports here at MTSU. While I've played most of the other sports in some capacity, where I've covered or watched many of the others at a high enough level to know some of nuances, there's so much I know I miss about the training, the mental preparation, the technique of what makes a strong cross country runner.
Then there's the structure of a collegiate season, where the results posted week-to-week matter so much less than how the team performs on one morning in late October. I suppose that's true of every team at MTSU with conference tournament, but the wins in individual games are far more obvious for a writer like me than they are in the sport of running, where improvement over the season is far more important than the meet-to-meet results.
What I do know, what's self-evident, is that Keith Vroman has recruited a lot of good ones in his time in Murfreesboro. Seven of his now nine CUSA Cross Country titles came when he was associate head coach of the program, leading the cross country team under Dean A. Hayes. Now, after Saturday, Vroman has his first two CUSA titles since he began leading the entire Track and Field program.
He also finds that distance running talent from all over the world. The ten runners who scored for MTSU this weekend hailed from four different countries on three different continents. And clearly, he's found runners with the right makeup, as he alluded to after the clutch win from the Blue Raider women on Saturday.
"There's so much pressure," Vroman said. "Especially after the first one is won, to come out and win the second one."
On a broader level this weekend, Cross Country's pair of championships only set the tone for the rest of the year in the Murphy Center, for the rest of Conference USA, that the Blue Raiders will continue to be tough to beat in the annual Director's Cup. Since MTSU entered Conference USA in 2013, the Blue Raiders have claimed 39 CUSA titles, more than any other school in that time period.
The two titles came the morning after wins for women's basketball, soccer and volleyball on Friday night, and just a few hours before volleyball finished off UTEP in four sets to take the sole possession of second place in the CUSA standings entering the final two weekends of the season, putting them on the opposite side of the bracket of nationally ranked WKU, with the Hilltoppers scheduled to visit the AMG in just two weeks' time.
This time next week, I'll likely be previewing the season openers for both men's and women's basketball. The Lady Raiders, of course, enter 2023 receiving votes in the coaches' poll as the reigning, defending Conference USA Champions, while the Blue Raiders were picked as co-favorites for the CUSA title in the new nine-team league. They too will have a chance to make their mark on MTSU's championship legacy.
And that's not even getting into the fun to be had in the spring where MTSU will defend two CUSA titles (men's tennis and softball) and go for several more on the court, on the links, on the track and out at the ballfield.
There's a long road ahead, and we've still got much of the fall slate to wrap up in the weeks to come. But the standard for 2023-24 has already been set by Cross Country in the Murphy Center. And I can't wait to see who rises to meet it in the months ahead.
Players Mentioned
