Ag harriers finish third, fourth at BYU
Although the men’s and women’s cross country teams’ top runners were suffering from injuries and therefore not able to run in the meet, both teams did fairly well.
The women’s squad defeated the University of Utah, Utah Valley State College and Northwest Nazarene to finish third behind Weber State and BYU. The men’s team also did well against rivals BYU and Weber State. USU beat the University of Utah, Utah Valley State, Northwest Nazarene and Westminster. The men’s came in fourth behind Minnesota, Weber State and BYU.
“We went down there not expecting to do the best we could,” said Aggie runner David Danley. “The meet was a really good indicator of where we were and what we needed to work on.”
The men’s cross country team was short two of its top runners, Mike Nielson and Clark Bryner, due to injuries. Sophomore Trevor Ball led the Aggies though, coming in 14th with a time of 20:32.5. Other top finishers for the men were Ryan Griffeth coming in 25th, Heath Wing 36th and Jared Glenn and Carsen Campbell coming in 39th and 71st, respectively.
Freshman Ashley Johnson led the USU women, although they were also short two top runners, Audrey Golightly and Kristin Coombs, due to injuries. Johnson finished the course in 18:29.7 to come in eighth overall. Other top finishers for Utah State include Lida Riplinger who came in 13th, Tiffany Strickland 16th, Christi Howell 20th and Rebekah Mier 24th.
“We were really strong, but nobody had their best performance,” Strickland said. “It was a really hard course and I think that affected our performance, but we were really happy about how close we stayed to Weber, closer than we have been for a while. It was a real eye-opener for us.”
Howell said, “The team did pretty well, but there is definitely room for improvement.”
The Aggies are now looking forward to their regular season meets, starting with one at Minnesota next week.
“It will be a big invitational with a lot of nationally ranked teams there,” Danley said. “It is important to beat those teams so that we can have a better chance of making it to nationals. Right now, we really hope that we can keep everybody healthy and get them ready for the big meets. If we can do that, then we will have a really good chance of heading to nationals this year.”
For the women’s team, Howell said she is hoping that the team can work on not taking starting the course so fast and staying together.
“We were generally able to stay close together, but we would like to have more women that can stay in a tighter bunch,” she said.
Although many runners stepped up and did well at the meet, USU Head Coach Gregg Gensell said he is hoping to see everybody healthy and able to run for the rest of the season.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu