Impromptu Meet 'Weird' But Worthwhile For NU

Runners on the Nebraska women's cross country team approached the starting line for Saturday's annual Rim Rock Classic near Lawrence, Kansas. With the start of the run only 5 minutes away, the team huddled for its pre-race pep talk.
 
Clouds loomed overhead, though, as the meet announcer abruptly informed the runners the race wouldn't start as scheduled at 9 a.m. Predicted lightning during the race caused the delay.
 
"Disappointment, but we understand the NCAA rules," Nebraska men's and women's cross country coach David Harris said. "You try to avoid stopping the race in the middle, which they would've had to do had there been a lightning strike, or lightning in the area."
 
Nebraska retreated to its team bus and checked the area radar. It showed storm cells followed by storm cells followed by some more storm cells. The chances the race would go off seemed dire, at best.
 
For Harris, the thunderstorms caused a brainstorm.
 
Nebraska's crosstown competitors from Nebraska Wesleyan had also traveled to the meet. In fact, the teams' busses parked next to each other. Harris also knew one of his runners, Allie Binder, had connections to a track facility in a small town the teams had traveled through on their way to Lawrence.
 
Next, Harris told Nebraska Wesleyan coach Ted Bulling about his impromptu idea. What if the teams met in Auburn, and ran head-to-head in what would count as a scored meet?
 
"I said, 'Ted, would you consider this if I could get it arranged?' " Harris said. "And he thought about it."
 
Bulling talked to his team captains, and Harris did the same.
 
"With really not knowing if KU was going to get this underway, or when they were going to get it underway," Harris said, "I just said, 'I've got to make a decision here.' So I went back to Ted and said, 'I'm going. I'm leaving.' "
 
Bulling agreed, and his team, which first had to retreat to its hotel to collect its belongings, eventually followed Nebraska north on Highway 75.
 
And that, folks, is how the inaugural Small Town Showdown, on a sunny day in the heart of Nemaha County in southeast Nebraska, came to fruition.
 
"It was a weird day," Harris said, "probably one of the weirdest days I've had as a coach, in terms of a competition day."
 
Yes, organizers of the Rim Rock Classic offered some jaw-dropping looks when Harris told them his team was bailing. They understood his concerns, so they weren't upset, just … surprised when Harris explained his Plan B.
 
Harris had Binder, an Auburn High School graduate, call her father, Todd, the Auburn assistant basketball coach, who called the Auburn athletic director, Jason Palmer, who gave permission. Staff quickly prepared the facilities for the hastily arranged meet, opening the track, the locker room and the school.
 
"They were so accommodating, so nice to us," Harris said.
 
Nebraska won both the men's and women's races, with Auburn's outdoor track serving as the course, which, while abnormal, is perfectly within NCAA rules.
 
"That's definitely a first," said Nebraska senior runner Elsa Forsberg, who finished second to teammate Judi Jones.
 
Forsberg said runners from both teams took a positive attitude and made the most of an unusual situation.
 
"It was weird, I guess," Forsberg said. "Coach had talked to us and told us this would be the best way to get a good effort out of us that day."
 
Some runners were initially disappointed, Forsberg said, because they had been eager to run their first 6K race of the season, as previous races had all been 5K, and NCAA championship distance is 6K.
 
"We were ready to test ourselves at that distance," she said, "but we'll get that next week at pre-nationals, so it will be OK."
 
In Auburn, the women ran 3 miles, or 1.7 shorter than planned, and the men ran 4 miles, or 1 mile shorter than the Rim Rock course. Nebraska and Wesleyan decided on a 1:45 start time for one race.
 
"We line up on the track, with men and women, different lanes for teams," Harris said, "and we say, 'On your mark, set, go!' "
 
Coaches timed the event and filmed the finish, although the race had no referees or official starter with a gun. Bulling typed up and distributed results, undoubtedly surprising and confusing people who knew nothing of the Small Town Showdown, an impromptu name Harris created.
 
Some parents from both teams who had traveled to Kansas, including Forsberg's, followed along to Auburn and cheered on the runners.
 
Harris treated the event more like an exhibition, while Wesleyan, which needed the competition as one of its five meets, will officially count the results.
 
"It's a scored meet, but it wasn't of importance for me to do that," Harris said. "More important was to get a good competition level practice level in, almost like an exhibition."
 
Harris, did, however, tell his teams before the race he would use the competition to partly decide which 12 runners he will take to the Oct. 19 Under Armour Pre-Nationals in Terre Haute, Indiana.
 
"They were aware when they lined up. I said, 'There's no excuses; you give your best effort, let's get a great effort out of this," Harris said. "We made a situation better for us, because we did compete. There were several who felt like they got PR-type efforts, several felt like they got the speed work they needed.
 
"We did salvage it. It was in sunshine. It was beautiful. It felt like we were laying it on a line."
 
Wesleyan runners also had some personal-best times, Harris said, and the teams, who already work together to host a meet in the fall, developed a stronger connection. They took a group picture to commemorate the event.
 
"We know we're both hometown teams, so that's kind of cool," Forsberg said. "But after this, there's even more of a bond, because definitely having them there made it more of a race effort. It didn't feel like a practice. I think it helped a lot of people, and we got something really good out of the day."
 
The impromptu event carried out so well that Harris wasn't all that bothered when he later learned the Rim Rock Classic had somehow found a hole within the storm systems and indeed ran its races.
 
"I wasn't sad about it, necessarily. I felt like once we made that decision, we had to go with it," Harris said. "It was weird, but then the more that I thought about it, and the fact that we did it, I think you can say that we really accomplished something from it."
 
Harris is somewhat serious about making this an annual event, with the same name, to be held in some area small town – perhaps an exhibition similar to what the volleyball team does in the spring.
 
"What it showed, and this is what's neat about sports a lot of times, it showed a lot of sportsmanship between the two teams," Harris said. "It showed the ability to work together. It was just like we wanted to help each other out that day.
 
"I feel really good about what we did."
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.