Lananna was hired at UVA in September 2019, after cross country season had begun. That late start hindered the new staff’s recruiting efforts, as did the COVID-19 pandemic that struck in March 2020.
“We were starting from a position that wasn’t great,” Lananna said.
Of the 11 NCAA championships Lananna’s teams have won during his coaching career, six were in cross country: two with the Oregon men, three with the Stanford men, and one with the Stanford women.
His programs at UVA are not at that level, but they’re trending in a positive direction. The ACC is among the top conferences in cross country, and in preseason voting by the league’s coaches, UVA was picked to finish fourth on the men’s side and fifth on the women’s.
“I think we’ve established a pretty good core of men and women, so I like where we are,” Lananna said. “I feel like we’re in a good position to actually build, and I think we have some good foundational men and women to build a future on. I like what I see. I like the attitude. I think there’s an attitude about getting better every day, every week.”
In ACC cross country, men race on an 8k course. The women run a 5k.
The Virginia men’s top performers include Rohann Asfaw, Wes Porter, Yasin Sado and Derek Johnson, who’s a standout steeplechaser in outdoor track & field. Another returning runner to watch is Jack Eliason, who was the Cavaliers’ top finisher at the Spider Alumni Open meet Sept. 3 in Richmond. And then there’s freshman Gary Martin, who was one of the greatest high school milers ever in the United States.
“Gary’s a middle distance guy,” Lananna said, “but he’s fully prepared and determined, and I learned very early in my coaching career to never doubt when someone tells you they’re doing to do something. I look at their goals through their eyes, and he fully expects to make an impact [in cross country]/ So therefore, I fully expect for him to make an impact.”
On the women’s side, the Cavaliers added a strong group of transfers to a core of such returning runners as Margot Appleton, Mia Barnett and Anna Workman. Appleton, a sophomore, was named the first ACC Women’s Performer of the Week for the 2022 season after winning at the Spider Alumni Open.
The transfers are Addison Cox (New Hampshire), Linnaea Kavulich (Columbia), Camryn Menninger (NYU), Esther Seeland (Messiah) and Rebecca Story (Stanford).
“I’ve never been in the transfer business,” Lananna…