Results
LOUISVILLE – The Abilene Christian women's cross country team finished 18th of 43 schools at the Adidas Pre-National Cross Country Meet in front of South Central Region rivals No. 3 Texas (26th) and No. 4 SMU (23rd), while the men finished 21st (of 24) led by a 84th-place performance from senior
Ryan Cleary.
Redshirt senior
Michaela Hackett covered the Red 6K course in 20:28.3, coming in just 0.3 seconds behind Arkansas' Carina Viljoen.
Alexandria Hackett finished 35th with a time of 20:31.4 and Diana García Muñoz made it into the top 100 with her mark of 21:11.6. There were 297 competitors entered into the Women's Red 6K, and junior Carnley Graham also finished among the top half with her fourth-place ACU time (144th overall) of 21:37.7.
"Our women's team had a solid race day beating region opponents Texas and SMU," distance coach Jelen Jarvis said. They finished really well overall even if we didn't finish as high as I thought we could."
Freshman
Soren Underwood rounded out the scoring five for ACU, finishing with a time of 23:15.6 that was good for 263rd.
Cleary clocked the fast Wildcat time on the men's side with a Black Race 8K mark of 25:41.6. Teammate
Drew Cummings covered the course in 25:59.9 and
Travis Nichols followed closely in 26:14.8.
John Baker finished 150th, clocking a time of 26:30.2 and freshman
Roy Kipkorir paced the course in 26:59.2.
"The men's team didn't quite have a great day, as it was just an OK day overall," he added. "We have a lot of work to do before the (Oct. 27) conference meet."
Nationally second-ranked Oregon won the women's seeded race with 63 points followed by No. 1 Colorado (91), No. 9 Arkansas (148), No. 19 Utah State (214) and No. 4 Michigan (235).
The women's individual crown in the Red 6K went to New Hampshire's Elinor Purrier, who edged Missouri's Karissa Schweizer by 1.2 seconds, 19:28.5 to 19:29.7, while the men's winner of the Black 8K was Tulane's Emmanuel Rotich (23:47.1). His Green Wave finished 15th overall as the top-five was composed of Ohio State, BYU, Oregon, Virginia Tech and Bowling Green.
The Wildcats return to action Friday, October 27 when they play host the Southland Conference Championships at ACU Cross Country Course.
