By Shilo Goodson
The BYU women”s cross country team did it again on Saturday, winning the Mountain West Conference Championship in San Diego.
“I think that pretty much everybody had a really good race,” freshman Heidi Magill said. “I think everyone”s really happy that this is what happened and we won, and so you can”t do much better than that.”
BYU defeated their opponents in the conference by scoring only 24 points. Colorado State came in second with 59 points. Wyoming got third place with 97 points, and all the other schools followed with over 100 points.
For the Cougars, this is their 17th consecutive conference title and their sixth in the MWC. Laura Turner attributed some of that success to the attitude of women”s cross country coach Patrick Shane.
“He doesn”t be like, ”Oh, we have to win this championship,” but he just says, ”Go out and run your best,” and so we all do that, and that”s why I think we run our best when we run as a team,” Turner, a three-time All-American, said. “We really focused on running as a team in this race, and I think that”s why we are able to do it [win the Conference title] for so many years.”
Not only did the Cougars win as a team, including Turner winning the race, but they had quite a few other individual victories as well.
The Cougars swept the top three positions with Turner”s 21:23 time beating Rena Chesser”s second-place time of 21:49. Following behind them in third overall and for the team was Magill with a time of 22:01. All three of these athletes got First-Team All-MWC honors.
The Cougars also had three athletes who earned Second-Team All-MWC honors: Amber Harper, Jami Caldwell and Julie Cameron. Harper came in fourth for the Cougars and eighth overall in 22:37. Caldwell, fifth for the team and 10th overall, came in at 22:51. Cameron placed sixth for the Cougars and 11th overall, coming in two seconds behind Caldwell.
After Saturday”s race, two BYU athletes won some of the top honors in the conference. Turner was named the MWC Female Athlete of the Year for her finish in the race. Magill was awarded MWC Freshman Athlete of the Year for her race on Saturday, not something surprising to Shane, who predicted before Saturday”s race that Turner and Magill had a good chance at these awards.
The Cougars will compete in the NCAA Regionals in two weeks, where they will try to qualify for nationals. Regionals will be held in Fort Collins, Colo. The top two teams there will automatically qualify to compete in the national race.
