In tabbing Geoff Harrison to be Brookdale Community College's first cross country coach, athletic director Frank Lawrence chose one of the Shore area's best.

In his dozen years at Red Bank Regional High School, Harrison made the school synonymous with distance running excellence. Among the many highlights were the girls' distance medley relay teams, built around Amanda and Katy Trotter, that won Penn Relays Championship of America and National Championships.

When Lawrence first broached the idea of coaching BCC's first cross country team with Harrison during the spring, he found the prospect to be "pretty exciting" and, decided to take the leap from high school to college coaching.

"It's a nice new challenge," said Harrison. "I was at Red Bank Regional for 12 years; I was ready for a change. I wanted to give it a try.

"I like the idea of running a program by myself," he added. "I'm excited for the opportunity."

The biggest challenge Harrison faces in this first year, he said, was "getting numbers." It's something that Harrison believes with an entire year to recruit in 2009-10 can be overcome. Brookdale will be fielding a complete men's team this fall and a women's team as well despite the short time that Harrison had to recruit for this season.

Harrison's assistant coach is Ern Mc- Carthy, who starred at Red Bank Catholic High School before running collegiately at Stockton College.

The team has been holding its workouts in the mornings using the BCC campus as well as neighboring Thompson Park.

One of Harrison's first recruits was Mike Kologe, whom he coached at Red Bank. Kologe brings some solid credentials to the program with a 4:22 mile to his résumé and personal best of 16:44 at Holmdel Park.

While recruiting will be a challenge, Harrison believes he has something going for him because his primary recruiting area is the Shore Conference.

"The Shore Conference has become such a hotbed with distance runners," he pointed out, adding that it's not just the standouts such as Colts Neck's Craig Forys and Ashley Higginson, Southern Regional's Danielle Tauro and Jillian Smith and Manalapan's Robby Andrews that have made the Shore so attractive, but the overall wealth of talent. This gives Harrison a very large recruiting base for starters and a reason he sees a bright future for BCC cross country.

Brookdale's inaugural season will begin on Sept. 5, when the team competes in the Monmouth University XC Kick-Off opener, which is right next door at Thompson Park.

Harrison will take his harriers to meets in Dickinson and Gettysburg, Pa., at Stockton College and to Westfield State in Massachusetts during the season with a singular goal.

"The goal being to expose them to as many different colleges as possible," he remarked. "Kids don't understand how easy it is to transfer in (to a four-year school) from junior college."

Harrison said he will judge his success by "how many kids get to the next level." That why he said he wants to take his Jersey Blue runners to as many meets out of state as possible (next year he will take them to the big Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa).

Ultimately, Brookdale will be looking to host its own meet, probably at Thompson Park.

As expected, Harrison has set his goals high. Within three years he expects Brookdale to be competing for the Region 19 championship and by five years, to be competing for a national championship.

There are numerous championship banners hanging from the Collins Arena ceiling on campus. The race for BCC harriers is to be the first team to put a cross country championship banner up there alongside the rest.