Nicholls cross country teams have sights on winning their own invitational

The winning collegiate teams in Saturday’s Nicholls XC Invitational held at The Nicholls Farm course will come away with a trophy.

That doesn’t happen much in a collegiate regular-season cross country meet.

“I started buying trophies for the college race,” said Stefanie Slekis, coach of the men’s and women’s teams at Nicholls. “When we started, we only got high school trophies because we co-hosted with E.D. White.

“A lot of regular college meets; they don’t buy trophies. It’s very rare that college meets give out trophies. You just don’t do it.”

Slekis decided to do it with an admitted ulterior motive.

“The first year I got trophies was the year I thought we would win,” she laughed. “I bought trophies, but Tulane came in and they actually won.”

It was a bit later when the meaning of gathering hardware in college sports really took hold for Slekis.

“The year after I had taken our men’s team to the Southern meet and they won a trophy,” Slekis recalled. “For our guys, it was a big moment. I took them on purpose there thinking they could win. They could build confidence. They were in the big invitationals, and they were constantly at the bottom of the pack because you are racing like regionally ranked teams.

“You see in other sports in early-season games, you can get those wins and get your confidence up. We went to the Southern meet. We ran our best guys. I held out our top girls and we barely came out second. We almost won with our b-team.”

For a men’s program that had been reinstituted only a few years early, the trophy was tangible proof of accomplishment.

“The men won. They took a picture of the trophy and they put the trophy in front of (The Barker Building at Nicholls),” Slekis said. “It meant a lot and they had a really great season that year, and I think part of it was just getting their confidence up.

“I took over a program that we couldn’t beat Southern when I started. Now, we can easily beat them. They have a good team this year, actually.”

Saturday’s event, which is being held for the fifth time, begins with the Colonel Cross Country 5k community race at 7 a.m.

The University Women 5k is slated to begin at 8 a.m., with the University Men 4 Mile run at 8:30 a.m.

The High School Girl 5k is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. and the High School Boys 5k to follow at 9:30 a.m.

A combined Junior Varsity Boys and Girls 3 Mile event will conclude the schedule at 10 a.m.

Along with host Nicholls, participating colleges include the men’s and women’s programs from Alcorn State, Dillard, Loyola, Southeastern Louisiana, Southern, Texas A&M-Texarkana, and Xavier. Also taking part in the event will be the men’s team from Victoria Junior College.

A total of 19 prep schools are scheduled to compete in the event.

The Colonels go into the race coming off an improved performance at LSU after opening the season at UNO.

“Looking at our men’s team, I think we did a much better job over the 6k distance,” Slekis said. “A lot of guys improved how close they were to each other for the first meet.

“William Nizzo was our fifth guy but his 6k actually converted to like what William Bellina ran for 5k at the UNO meet, so substantially better than what Nizzo ran at the first meet. The LSU course wasn’t any easier than the UNO course, actually, I think it was harder. I think we ran against guys who were there really well.”

The more established Nicholls women’s team also performed well at LSU, according to Slekis.

“On the women’s side, Kassidy (Besson) was mixing it up with the LSU girls,” the Nicholls coach said. “She beat a Southeastern girl and an Alcorn girl that will both be at this meet.

“That’s what we’re looking at, especially on the women’s side, one of our top girls theoretically should win the individual title – in addition to try and win as a team, which we think we should. I’m really trying to see how many we can pack up there up front.”

The Nicholls men, Slekis said, are also in a position to win the home meet.

“For the men, adding a team like Texas A&M-Texarkana, makes it a little bit harder or a bit more challenging – they ran pretty fast for a 5k earlier this season. But that’s what we want. We want to get pushed, so I think that will be fun. For the guys, we thought it would be a little bit easier than that to win, so we get to have a team that pushes us a little bit more and challenges us,” Slekis said.

Nicholls has never won its own meet.

“I think that’s a thing that’s interesting. You want to recruit good teams, but it’s also fun to win at home. Looking at it, I think we’ve gotten a lot more competitive. We don’t uninvite people, if that makes sense, we welcome the challenge,” said Slekis.

What would the Nicholls coach like to be able to say after the meet is concluded?

“That the trophies I bought, we get to keep.”