WOMEN'S CROSS COUNTRY "We're taking steps in the right direction,'' he said.
Since placing second in the Big Ten in two out of three seasons (2006 and 2008), the Badgers have struggled to 10th- and seventh-place fin- ishes at the conference meet in each of the last two years. "The last couple of seasons have been frustrat-
ing,'' conceded Stintzi, the eighth-year coach, who guided Wisconsin to fourth in the 2006 NCAA Championship. "The dirty little secret,'' said Stintzi, who's also
the head coach of the UW women's track team, "is that cross country and track share scholar- ships.
"Some people
spend all their track scholarships on cross country people, while some people spend all their cross coun- try scholarships on sprinters.
"We've tried to bal-
ance it out — prob- ably a little bit too much — to get track going. Now, we're taking a step back and going, 'What are we? We are a dis- tance program.' "So we've spent a little bit more money (on scholarships) the last couple of years on distance runners and I think we're going to move back where we should be. "You need to invest in those areas that you're going to be good at, and you've traditionally been good at. I think we lost sight of who we were. It's time to get back to that, and we're making prog- ress.''
Stintzi, a seven-time All-American and six- time Big Ten champion with the Badgers, has
a good feeling about his runners going into Fri- day's competition. "I like our team this year,'' he said. "I like the camaraderie and I like the team work. We had only 30 seconds separating our top five run- ners last weekend. We haven't had that for a few years. "Are we the team that we were three years ago? I'm not sure, but we're not far behind.'' Landing someone like Anzalone was definitely a positive statement for his program. "When you're the 10th-best kid in the country, everybody wants you,'' Stintzi said. "She's clear- ly someone that we thought could come in and
"You need to invest in those areas that you're going to be good at," Stintzi said of UW's dis- tance running heritage. "I think we lost sight of who we were. It's time to get back to that, and we're making progress.''
