Oct. 12, 2008
Men's Results 
Women's Results
by Matias Saari, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
FAIRBANKS,AK -- While the movie Jurassic Park featured dinosaurs running wild, on Saturday afternoon the Alaska Nanooks cross country team got to do the same at the Hawaii ranch where the 1993 hit was filmed.
"You could recognize these hillsides if you had seen Jurassic Park," Alaska coach Scott Jerome said Sunday after returning to Fairbanks. "You couldn't find a more picturesque place for a cross country meet."
That place was the 4,000-acre Kualoa Ranch in Ka'awa Valley on the northeast side of Oahu, as the Nanooks participated in the sweltering Hawaii Pacific University Invitational with six other schools.
"In the warm-up, we could see the signs where they had filmed the movies," said Nanook Ray Sabo, who helped chase some cows off the course before the women's race. "It was really neat just running there, knowing we'd all seen Jurassic Park."
With most Nanooks athletic teams having visited Hawaii in recent years, the cross country runners finally got their chance with a four-day trip including a stay at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu.
The team trained by running and hiking to the top of famous Diamond Head State Monument one morning at sunrise, but the trip involved much more than athletics. The squad also went snorkeling and visited the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.
Sabo missed the latter excursion.
"Actually I went surfing with Mitch (Chandler) that morning. We wanted to hit the waves early," Sabo said.
As for the HPU Invitational, Jerome estimated the unusually late start time (4:15 p.m. for women and almost 5 p.m for men) featured a temperature of 85 degrees and humidity of 80 percent. A tough, hilly course further increased the challenge.
While a few Nanooks wilted in the heat, Sabo said the conditions, helped by a breeze and clouds, were mostly bearable.
"It wasn't too hot out. It was kind of overcast. (But) it was like running in a sauna in some parts of the course," Sabo said. "I had been drinking (water) so much, so I was sweating a lot, so I didn't get too overheated."
Sabo, a junior from Whitehorse, Yukon, ran part of the 8-kilometer course with teammates Chandler, Chris Eversman and Matt Scerbak.
Sabo posted the top Alaska men's result of 15th place in 29 minutes, 51 seconds. He was followed by scoring members Chandler (20th in 30:20), Einar Often (24th in 30:31), Eversman (30th in 31:04) and Scerbak (34th in 31:50).
NCAA Division I Xavier University dominated the meet with seven of the top 13 finishers, while the Nanooks placed fifth of six teams.
For the women, freshman Theresia Schnurr took seventh in the 5K to lead the Nanooks to a fourth-place finish among seven teams.
Schnurr's time of 20:08 was 36 seconds faster than teammate Julia Pierson in 14th. Other scorers included Anna Coulter in 19th, Elisabeth Habermann in 24th and Jana Benedix in 30th.
