This fall, the men’s and women’s cross country teams might find themselves feeling a slight sense of déjà vu.
Both teams went through a coaching change last year, only to go through another in 2015.
However this season, the change is coming after a year of historical proportions.
The men’s team had its best finish since the 1983 season and is enoying the growth of Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) Newcomer of the Year in sophomore Michael Ward, while the women’s team is the reigning MVC champion with the 2014 MVC cross country runner of the year Caitlin Busch.
Busch, who is on her third coach in three years, said this year’s coaching change won’t really affect her as a runner.
“Going from coach Burns to coach Woods was really different,” Busch said. “Now that I built up my mileage, any coach wouldn’t really matter because I feel like all of them are basically on the same page.”
Gone is MVC coach of the year Willy Wood, whose one-year tenure ushered in a year of major success for both men’s and women’s cross country teams.
Enter Darren Gauson, the new track and cross country coach, who comes to Bradley from Lamar University, which is in Beaumont, Texas.
Gauson, who also held a coaching position at Butler University, is no stranger to the Midwest, and he’s also familiar with the Bradley team he inherited.
“Our team at Lamar, we were fairly close with the Bradley team,” Gauson said. “They were a couple spots behind us so we were duking it out a little bit there last year.”
Gauson also knows some of this Bradley team from his time at Butler, where he says he sees some familiar faces he tried to recruit as a part of the Bulldog’s cross country staff.
“A lot of them I recruited when I was at Butler,” Gauson said. “Some of the older people. The Busch twins, Emily Delvo and Eric. Michael Ward as well.”
All these familiar faces are now part of Gauson’s highly regarded team.
In the MVC preseason coaches poll, the Bradley women’s cross country team was voted to repeat at Valley champs, while the men’s team was voted to finishing second in the conference.
While the women’s team is expected to finish at the top again, Busch said the team is not lettting the preseason hype get to their head.
“We’re not really focusing too much on the rankings, just because anything can happen,” Busch said. “I personally think we have a really good shot [at the MVC title] again.”
Both teams feature experienced squads that return most of the runners from last year’s teams, save for the graduated seniors and newly added freshmen.
“Coach Wood and coach Burns did a phenomenal job of finding the right people and developing them over the last five, six years,” Gauson said. “I’ve got the responsibility to keep the train going in the right direction.”
Currently, the direction Bradley cross country is heading puts them on the road to nationals, and Gauson says the success of the team directly relates to the success of the younger runners.
“It’s going to be using that talent but then developing some of our sophomores and juniors to get up to that level,” Gauson said. “For some of our older people, for some of the guys that have been running at a high level, [they have] to help their teammates sort of come through.”
A big part of the cross country team’s success last season was the pack running style that coach Wood implemented, where runners are grouped together in a pack, and stay together for the entire race.
It was successful for the Braves last year, as these running packs would finish together at a high place, netting more points for Bradley’s team as a whole.
Gauson said this year he will utilize pack running as a scheme but not as much as last year’s squad.
“We’ll use it [at] some of the bigger invites, like Notre Dame and [Pre-nationals] where it’s a little bit harder to really pack all together,” Gauson said. “We might use kind of like some smaller packs inside of our big teams because I don’t want to hold people back and maybe miss out on a couple of points.”
While pack running led to teamwide success, Busch’s individual success took her to the top of the MVC. However, the senior has her eyes set on goals that takes her past the limits of the conference.
“My goal is further than conference,” Busch said. “Running regionals and making it to nationals, either as a team or individually, is my biggest goal because I’ve never been to cross country nationals and it would be really cool to do that.”
Pressure to win this season does not only exist for Busch.
Gauson admits the pressure to win a title now exists but knows it just comes with the job.
“There’s pressure there, but it’s something to embrace and look forward to,” Gauson said. “If you weren’t excited, you wouldn’t be in the business.”
While Gauson is charged with steering the runners down the right path, he’ll take some small victories first.
“Learning 56 names was a big challenge,” Gauson said. “I think I’m almost there. We have three sets of twins, so sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. I think I’ve got the Hofferts and the Busch twins down.”
