Sports
CU Olympic sports notes: Roster overhaul nearly complete for new cross country coach Sean Carlson
The new-look Colorado cross country team isn’t quite yet ready to toe the starting line for the 2024 season.
But the squad certainly is starting to take shape.
CU’s Olympic sports shared the stage on Friday during the Buffs’ 71st annual fall sports media day, with new cross country coach Sean Carlson making his first appearance in front of the local media contingent.
Hired two weeks ago to replace Mark Wetmore, Carlson took the podium alongside a newly-hired assistant to discuss a program and roster still in flux three weeks ahead of the season-opening meet. Friday’s event provided not only the first public look at CU’s first new cross country leader in more than 30 years, but also featured the announcement of a few of the new roster additions, the release of the schedule, and the announcement of Kate Mattison as the new distance assistant coach.
(As of midafternoon on Friday, the updated cross country roster, schedule, and staff additions remained unavailable on the CU athletics website.)
The roster is undergoing a football-like overhaul, with Carlson attempting to quickly rebuild a vaunted distance program that fell to 19th (women) and 25th (men) at the NCAA cross country championships last fall.
“The landscape of college athletics is changing. The landscape of track and cross country is changing,” Carlson said. “I think it’s inevitable that there’s going to have to be changes in order for us to continue to be successful.”
Carlson, who spent the past two years at Tennessee following a 10-year run at Notre Dame, announced the signing of several new additions. On the men’s side, CU added Dean Casey and Christopher Cherry, both of whom followed Carlson from Tennessee; Freshman Ethan Edgeworth, the first four-time state cross country champion in Alabama; Simon Kelati, a Greeley native and a graduate transfer from Western Colorado; and Jake Liebert, a freshman out of South Carolina.
For the women’s team, CU added Louise Lounes, a graduate transfer from Charlotte who finished 18th in the 10K at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships in 2022; and Jessie Secor, another Tennessee transfer who was an SEC All-Freshman Team selection last year.
Mattison is another transplant from Carlson’s program at Tennessee and was a decorated runner at Western Carolina.
“I think recruiting is one of our biggest things we have to get on right now,” Carlson said. “We’re a little bit behind that the last couple years compared to teams who are competing for a podium finish. That’s our first kind of big push, get the best kids on the U.S. to come to Colorado.”
Tourney time
CU soccer head coach Danny Sanchez says he had been a leading voice in pushing the Pac-12 into hosting a women’s soccer conference tournament. It never happened, as the league remained one of the few major conferences that didn’t host a season-ending tournament.
Sanchez is a proponent of the format, as it gives NCAA Tournament bubble teams additional opportunities to play their way into the tournament field. Sanchez’s CU teams of 2018 and 2021 are good examples of squads whose tourney fate might have been different if they could’ve added a couple more quality results to the ledger.
The Big 12 women’s soccer tournament begins Oct. 30 in Kansas City at CPKC Stadium, home of the NWSL’s Kansas City Current. It will be a 12-team tournament, with the league’s bottom four teams left out of the field while the top four get first-round byes.
“I was one of the leads in the Pac-12 in trying to get a Pac-12 conference tournament for about eight years. There was always an excuse not to do it,” Sanchez said. “I just don’t think they were forward thinking, and we were falling behind in women’s soccer. Yeah, we won national championships and we have a lot of premier programs in that league. Every year that we’re looking at the NCAA Tournament like, ‘Man, if we just had a couple more games.’
“It gives more opportunities for the NCAA Tournament. It gives an opportunity to play a higher RPI team maybe a second time and get another result. I think it’s going to be a fantastic experience for the players. A chance to compete for another championship.”
Notable
The soccer team announced that fifth-year senior Rachel Rosen, goalie Jordan Nytes and Legacy High alum Juliauna Hayward will serve as co-captains this season. Rosen was the lone captain last year. … The men’s and women’s cross country teams open the season as hosts of the Rocky Mountain Showdown on Aug. 31. … The CU soccer team hosts North Texas in an exhibition match on Saturday at 7 p.m. … The CU volleyball team hosts its annual Black and Gold intrasquad scrimmage on Aug. 24.
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