Rob Conner will tell you that maintaining the 31-year streak of men’s conference cross country titles isn’t his program’s top priority.
But he also does enough to win the West Coast Conference meet every year and he most certainly isn’t looking forward to the day that run is snappped. It matters.
So imagine his surprise Tuesday afternoon when athletic director Larry Williams wandered into his office to tell him that Brigham Young University was going to join the conference in 2011.
“It was so far out of left field I couldn’t even tell you,” Conner said.
Probably just about every coach of every sport in the WCC felt just about the same way.
The move will shake-up the league in basketball, soccer, baseball, volleyball, golf and tennis. Overall, it will raise the profile of the entire conference.
BYU is a national power in cross country, and coach Ed Eyestone is one of the most revered in the U.S. Eyestone even holds the course record at Crystal Springs, the site of the last 25 WCC conference meets.
Conner has rarely had to raise a sweat out of his team to win the conference meet, often using his B squad.
Now?
“It will take a full effort,” he said. “We’ll see how important it is. My top priority is the national meet and my second priority is qualifying for the national meet.”
In fact, it’s been a benefit to the program to train through the conference meet on the way to regionals.
“A lot of schools in our conference haven’t had appropriate funding,” Conner said.”There are some programs on the rise. Loyola Marymount now has the same (scholarship allocation) as us. It’s getting tougher the last four years.”
It will move to another level with the addition of BYU, ranked 17th nationally in the preseason poll.
Portland, with a big-time top three of Alfred Kipchumba, Joash Osoro and Trevor Dunbar, begins the season ranked No. 8 and will send a JV unit to Corvallis on Friday to compete in the inaugural John Frank Invitational.
