Philadelphia, PA - After over a year of building from the ground on up, the La Salle women's triathlon program will commence NCAA competition on Sunday, September 7,  at the Patriots Sprint in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The Explorers will compete in three regular season events in September, before embarking on the East Regional Championship on October 25, followed by the subsequent National Championship on November 8.

La Salle enters the season with seven athletes, four of whom are freshmen: Averi Duncan, Beth Eldredge, Sofia Nordbeck, and Luciana Ruiz. Seniors Sophie Brandwene and Gabriela Herbreder join graduate student Fiona Davoudi to provide valuable experience and veteran leadership to the team.

The Explorers' roster footprint covers three international countries: Mexico, Norway, and Poland.

The diverse roster is the fruit of over a year's worth of recruiting and program building by Head Coach Sage Maaranen and the La Salle administration, which has also added women's rugby and women's acrobatics and tumbling, in addition to reinstating baseball. 

Interview With Head Coach Sage Maaranen 

How is it to finally be a coach now, and not just a recruiter starting a program?  

It's a total pleasure to have the athletes here. I feel like I got have a winning first group of athletes. They get along really well. They're supportive of each other. And I think we've got a lot of potential over the next four years. 

What has the dynamic of having four freshmen with two seniors and a graduate student been like?  

The older athletes have definitely taken the younger ones under their wings, which has been phenomenal.

What has La Salle been like now that you have a full year under your belt?  

Our athletes were just stunned to see the facilities that are being provided for them. We built a cycling studio over the summer that is really next-level; it's a fabulous space to train in and athletes are really excited to have that and see that we're being invested in by both La Salle and USA Triathlon to build a program that's going to have staying power and that is really supporting them. 

What does a triathlon practice and race week look like?  

We stick with our NCAA-allotted 20 hours per week. They train hard all week, and then we go to race. We typically train two-to-three times per day. This morning, they had a lift session followed by a swim mid-day and then we were in the bike studio by evening, so it's a lot of mixing and matching to make it all happen. For us being in the city, we take advantage of the weekends to be out on our bikes in the real world with less traffic. We ride long and hard, both Saturday and Sunday. 

What is a good bike route in Philadelphia? Do you have a favorite route that you like to take the team? 

We love MLK Drive on Saturdays — we go out there on Saturdays and do team tactics work. It's phenomenal because it's closed to traffic and it's beautiful, so athletes can work on their team tactics together. In the style of racing we do, they're able to ride together in a group and there's a lot of things that they can do strategy-wise to protect each other and work together to minimize the effort that they're putting in on the bikes, so that they've got fresh legs for the run. We're able to practice those skills really easily out on MLK, which is great. I'm also really exciting — we're going up to Nockamixon State Park next week or the week after, and we'll do a big long ride out there followed by an open water swim. It's beautiful and pretty close to home.

What are your goals for the program?

Developing a team culture that is going to have staying power over the next few years — we're creating the foundation and legacy in the way that athletes learn to treat each other, work through conflict, support each other, especially coming from a sport where in the past, it's been all about "me, me, me" and the individual result, to now it's a "we, we, we". We're building that up, and the goal is to carry that out over the next four or five years into performance.

Rules Explainer 

Scoring in NCAA triathlon is a similar format to cross country. In a competition, the top three finishers on each team "score", with the lowest total score being declared the winner. The remaining athletes competing on a team can be used to assist the scorers, or take over the place of other teams.  

In an NCAA-regulated triathlon, the competition takes place in a draft-legal format – a compact layout held over the sprint distance. Most distances consist of a 750-meter (.47-mile) open water swim, a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) bicycle race, and 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) run. The bike portion of the competition typically includes three loops, while the run features two. In a larger race, "lap-out" rules are commonly in effect, meaning that an athlete will be pulled from the race shall they be lapped by the race leader.  

Nationals 

National Championship qualification is contingent upon individual placement at the Regional Championship, and individual ranking. Hence, it is paramount for teams to develop their athletes throughout the season, while also learning to function as a team.