Matt Pereira will head to sunny San Diego on a mission... All-American or bust! (Itai Epstein photo)
Matt Pereira (Jr., Lake Zurich)
Regional finish: 7th place- 15:13
Matt Pereira is playing with house money in his last cross country race coming up this Saturday in San Diego. He has admitted several times over the course of the season that things haven't gone according to plan. He did not have the greatest of times in that many pundits dismissed him despite building up a great resume in two previous years. It seemed like it was a case of "hot now gone later." It did not help that he was injured much of the 2015 track and field season which relegated him to 4x800m relay duty at the state championship. The slow build up after a tough track campaign began in the summer. Pereira opened his season with a fourth place finish at the Peoria Notre Dame "Richard Spring" Invitational. Pereira got his first win of the season at the Wheeling Invitational in early October and did not lose again until the state championship where he finished fifth in 14:22. Pereira fell to a very disappointing 67th place the following weekend at the Nike Cross Midwest Regional Championship. No fret. Pereira had no choice but to rebound from the worse race of his life and unveiled a different race tactic. "I got next to Jon Davis [on the starting line] and tried to stay with him for as long as I could," he said afterwards. "When I fell out of the top five I didn't worry too much because I knew getting top 10 was the goal." It worked.
Quick Q&A:
How is training going?
"Training is going pretty great. The off weekend was nice and will hopefully give me a bit of an advantage over the kids who did NXN."
Are you more confident [in your changes of success] now that someone like Jon Davis got beat handily last weekend?
"Nah, I think Jon Davis will be back on his game this week so i'm not considering that too much."
Matt's final thoughts: "the goal [for me] is All-American and I think I have a pretty good shot since I still think I can race better than I have all season. It is pretty comforting [to know] that the two runners who were right behind and ahead of me at Foot Locker Midwest got 8th and 9th at NXN."
Matt's Footlocker Regional Interview
