FLORENCE, Ala. - Running in their second meet of the season, Lamar University's cross country teams went up against some strong competition at the North Alabama Showcase. Both teams managed to crack the top 20 as the women took 20th out of 39 teams while the men made the top 15 posting a 12th place finish (of 38 teams).

"Today was a great test for both our men and women," said assistant coach Andrew Sweeney. "We got to compete against more than 40 teams across several different regions, with some national caliber athletes and programs up front."
 
For the women's team, they tallied 574 points in the 5K run. Yasmin Austridge led the way once again with a 50th place finish and a time of 17:55.86. Nia Clatworthy came in 77th at 18:17.47 while Jillian Howard clocked in 18:46.92 (140th). Mykayla Mims (212nd; 19:27.01), Ashleigh Willis (225th; 19:39.80), and Hailey Cleggett (274th; 20:23.13) all were in the 200s while Jazaline Ayala (301st; 21:07.45) and Natalee Bergeron (323rd; 21:44.96) rounded out the Cardinals lineup.

"Our women continued to prove that they're a much stronger team than a year ago, but are also still gaining confidence in themselves to compete further up in the field," Coach Sweeney implied. "It was their first race above 3k this season, so there was some hesitancy with going out hard. They placed just inside the top half as a group, which is a good spot to be this early in the year with a young squad still gaining experience. We'll take away some valuable lessons from today."
 
Meanwhile, the men, who tallied 327 points in the 8K run, were led by George Wheeler, who was the only Cardinal in the top 10 as he finished in sixth place clocking in at 23:50.93. Eli Peveto took 74th place at 24:51.66. Jonathan Rivera was the third Cardinal runner in the top 100 as his 85th place finish came when he crossed the line at 24:59.29 seconds. Conor Smith (111th; 25:16.63) and Crawford Kiser (112th; 25:17.29) crossed the line nearly a second apart from each other while Hayden Eubank (116th; 25:21.12) was behind Kiser by just four seconds. Geovany Cisneros (160th; 25:59.92) and Alejandro Villalva (176th; 26:19.24) rounded out the meet for LU.

Only three of our eight guys had ever run an 8k before," Coach Sweeney admitted. "So we knew it was going to be a learning experience. They handled it well and will take some lessons with them into the rest of the season. George had a phenomenal race, going toe to toe with some of the best in the country. The rest of our pack found out how competitive it can be at this level, and will get back to work so they're ready for the postseason."

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