The women’s cross country team is very young this year with just one senior, but it has high hopes that with the many returnees, next year it will have the experience to achieve much more.

“We are a young team,” said freshman Stephanie Shenefield. “But with each meet we gain confidence and improve as a team.”

The Storm was disappointed with its 10th place finish at the conference meet, but also realized that the lack of experience plays a big role in that.

“I know the women were disappointed,” said Head Coach Erin Bresnan. “But we are mostly made up of freshmen and sophomores and only have three returnees from last year.”

Senior Miriah Johnson would have liked to play an important role in this year’s season, but was unable to run due to an injury to her foot. Although she did get to run in the conference meet and will be competing at Regionals this weekend.

“Miriah has trained in the pool all season until about four days prior to the conference meet,” said Bresnan. “And she only ran those three or four days prior and then competed in her first meet.”

The women will run this weekend at Grinnell for the NCAA Regional Championships starting at 11 a.m.

“We hope to get out there and get some good races in,” said Bresnan. “We had four of our runners have their best times in the conference meet and hope to keep improving.”

Even though the team didn’t have experience on its side this season, they are hoping to come back next year and have that change.

“We expect to come back with experience and confidence in our team,” said Shenefield. “We all plan on working hard this summer and some of us even hope to train together.”