July 10, 2011
By Richard Stevens — Senior Writer/GoLobos.com
Sometimes you can’t help but wonder if Lobo Coach Joe Franklin is more magician than coach extraordinaire.
And for his next cross-country trick, Joe Franklin will pull an elephant out of a hat and win back-to-back Mountain West championships and back-to-back NCAA Region titles.
Oh, wait. That second part really isn’t magic or fiction or Lobo daydreaming. It really did happen. Franklin’s men won the MWC title and followed that up with the NCAA West Region title. Ditto for the Lobo women.
OK, the domination at the MWC meet wasn’t exactly unprecedented or unexpected. The Lobos pulled the sweep in the fall of 2009, too. The Lobo women looked like they would have the edge over the 2010 field heading to Laramie, Wyo. The Lobo men were looking at a dogfight with those big, bad Brigham Young Cougars.
“We are just little, old New Mexico trying to compete with the big boys,” said Franklin prior to the race.
Yeah, right! Both Lobo squads were looking over their shoulders when it came to team totals. The No. 10 ranked women won their third straight title and the No. 12 Lobo men won their second straight.
The women were awesome. They got a 1-2-3 sweep from Natalie Gray, Sarah Waldron and Ruth Senior. Gray was the MWC Female Cross Country Athlete of The Year. The Lobo women won by 40 points over Colorado State. They should have run backwards in this race just to make it competitive.
The Lobo men got a fourth-place run out of Rory Fraser and a fifth-place finish from Keith Gerrard. UNM beat BYU by 13 points.
If you thought it couldn’t get any better than that, well, think again. Franklin must have packed a broom for UNM’s trip to Salt Lake City because it was another clean sweep.It was the first NCAA region win for both the men and the women. Of course, it was UNM’s first-ever sweep, too.
The men grabbed spots four through seven behind Gerrard, David Bishop, Fraser and Ross Millington. The women went four through six behind Gray, Waldron and Senior. Franklin was named the NCAA West Region Coach of The Year on both the men’s and women’s side.
Franklin’s Lobo women went on to the NCAA finals to finish fifth — the best finish in the program’s history.
Of course, the ride on that magic, sweeping broom puts a little pressure on Franklin for this coming fall. What `ya going to pull out of your hat this fall, Joe? How about producing that elephant and another magic broom?