The University of Mississippi Athletics
Ryan Vanhoy Weekly Press Conference
11/2/2020 | Cross Country
Ole Miss Men Swept Top-Three Spots at SEC Championships
OXFORD, Miss. – Ole Miss associate head coach for cross country Ryan Vanhoy met with members of the media on Monday to recap last Friday's SEC Championships, where the Rebel men swept the individual podium by taking the top-three spots for just the 10th time in SEC history – led by SEC Champion, Mario Garcia Romo. In the team standings, Ole Miss finished second in men's competition and third in women's competition, which marks the fifth consecutive top-three finish for the Rebel women after having never finished in the top-three prior to 2016.
Opening Statement
"Cross country just finished our fall season with the SEC Championships, which were this past Friday at LSU. Our men's team finished second place, our women's team finished third place. On the whole, I think any time you have both teams in the top-three in the SEC that's not something that you are ashamed of. Obviously, finishing top-three in a Power-5 conference is a nice result, but I think here we always strive to finish a little bit better than that, whether that's winning the conference or being top-two. Those are typically our goals every season, so I think we maybe fell a little short of what we could have done as a program this season. Certainly nothing that we're ashamed of by any means.
On the men's side, we went 1-2-3 individually, which, to be honest, you don't see that happen very often in cross country at a conference meet, especially in a good conference. We were definitely really happy about that and having an individual SEC Champion in Mario Garcia Romo. That's something we certainly celebrate at a high level. On the other hand, it's disappointing to go 1-2-3 and not win the meet as a team, and frankly, to not be close to winning the meet as a team. I feel like we didn't do enough to be competitive as a team, so that's a bit of a disappointment. Credit to Arkansas, especially their men's team. This is probably the best men's team they've ever had, at least since I've been coaching in the conference the last eight years. They're a tough competitor, they're really good and they're really deep. We gave it our best shot, but we just weren't good enough to beat them.
On the women's side, we finished third. Arkansas won the women's team battle. Alabama, who has had a nice season and didn't race very often but had a great team, they were a close second, and then we were third. Obviously, we're a little bit disappointed to be a spot lower than we were last year. It's funny, if you look at the meet last results last year we scored 93 points and were second and we felt really good about that performance, and this year we scored basically the same with 98 but we were third and a little bit disappointed.
The conference is much better, much more competitive this year than last. I think we have a better team than we did last year, but just a couple things didn't quite come together for us on the season and we never really quite had a full team performance that I thought we were capable of on the women's side.
From this point forward, the NCAA is supposed to be hosting a cross country championship in March, so we're hoping to be selected to that at an at-large basis. It gives us some time to get healthy on the women's side, get a couple people back that we didn't have this fall semester, to be a little bit more prepared to put down a really good team performance in March. On the men's side, it gives us some time to shore up our depth a bit, get some of our guys that were either working through injury issues or on limited training and have some time to get those guys back at 100 percent and hopefully get two teams on the starting line in March that are strong, ready to go and able to put out a performance that we can be happy with and proud of."
On balancing team performance against individual performance
"Like some other sports, you may have somebody in a key position that plays really well, but you lose the game. I think you can be very proud of how certain people performed but still disappointed in the team result that you get on paper. And credit to our top-three guys, obviously going 1-2-3 they were really happy with that, but they were not speaking negatively about other members of the team, they weren't disappointed in the other guys' performance. I just think they handled it really well, they were really mature about it. They were happy about how they performed individually, but they didn't take it out on the other guys, they were supportive. I think I was probably the most disappointed from a team perspective knowing it was a bit of a missed opportunity. It's really hard to win a conference championship, but when you go 1-2-3 and don't win it's a disappointment. I think you just try to manage both sides of it. You're happy for the guys that ran well, but you try to really understand why the performers that we needed to step up to secure the title and you try to talk to them about why that was. Maybe not getting too bogged down on either side of that; you can be happy for the individuals, but also disappointed that the team didn't get it done."
For more information on Ole Miss Track & Field and Cross Country, follow the Rebels on Twitter (@OleMissTrack), Facebook and Instagram.
Opening Statement
"Cross country just finished our fall season with the SEC Championships, which were this past Friday at LSU. Our men's team finished second place, our women's team finished third place. On the whole, I think any time you have both teams in the top-three in the SEC that's not something that you are ashamed of. Obviously, finishing top-three in a Power-5 conference is a nice result, but I think here we always strive to finish a little bit better than that, whether that's winning the conference or being top-two. Those are typically our goals every season, so I think we maybe fell a little short of what we could have done as a program this season. Certainly nothing that we're ashamed of by any means.
On the men's side, we went 1-2-3 individually, which, to be honest, you don't see that happen very often in cross country at a conference meet, especially in a good conference. We were definitely really happy about that and having an individual SEC Champion in Mario Garcia Romo. That's something we certainly celebrate at a high level. On the other hand, it's disappointing to go 1-2-3 and not win the meet as a team, and frankly, to not be close to winning the meet as a team. I feel like we didn't do enough to be competitive as a team, so that's a bit of a disappointment. Credit to Arkansas, especially their men's team. This is probably the best men's team they've ever had, at least since I've been coaching in the conference the last eight years. They're a tough competitor, they're really good and they're really deep. We gave it our best shot, but we just weren't good enough to beat them.
On the women's side, we finished third. Arkansas won the women's team battle. Alabama, who has had a nice season and didn't race very often but had a great team, they were a close second, and then we were third. Obviously, we're a little bit disappointed to be a spot lower than we were last year. It's funny, if you look at the meet last results last year we scored 93 points and were second and we felt really good about that performance, and this year we scored basically the same with 98 but we were third and a little bit disappointed.
The conference is much better, much more competitive this year than last. I think we have a better team than we did last year, but just a couple things didn't quite come together for us on the season and we never really quite had a full team performance that I thought we were capable of on the women's side.
From this point forward, the NCAA is supposed to be hosting a cross country championship in March, so we're hoping to be selected to that at an at-large basis. It gives us some time to get healthy on the women's side, get a couple people back that we didn't have this fall semester, to be a little bit more prepared to put down a really good team performance in March. On the men's side, it gives us some time to shore up our depth a bit, get some of our guys that were either working through injury issues or on limited training and have some time to get those guys back at 100 percent and hopefully get two teams on the starting line in March that are strong, ready to go and able to put out a performance that we can be happy with and proud of."
On balancing team performance against individual performance
"Like some other sports, you may have somebody in a key position that plays really well, but you lose the game. I think you can be very proud of how certain people performed but still disappointed in the team result that you get on paper. And credit to our top-three guys, obviously going 1-2-3 they were really happy with that, but they were not speaking negatively about other members of the team, they weren't disappointed in the other guys' performance. I just think they handled it really well, they were really mature about it. They were happy about how they performed individually, but they didn't take it out on the other guys, they were supportive. I think I was probably the most disappointed from a team perspective knowing it was a bit of a missed opportunity. It's really hard to win a conference championship, but when you go 1-2-3 and don't win it's a disappointment. I think you just try to manage both sides of it. You're happy for the guys that ran well, but you try to really understand why the performers that we needed to step up to secure the title and you try to talk to them about why that was. Maybe not getting too bogged down on either side of that; you can be happy for the individuals, but also disappointed that the team didn't get it done."
For more information on Ole Miss Track & Field and Cross Country, follow the Rebels on Twitter (@OleMissTrack), Facebook and Instagram.
Players Mentioned
/ Cross Country
Wednesday, October 08