Men’s cross country wins at Notre Dame, women finish sixth

116

The BYU cross country teams had strong performances at the Notre Dame Invitational on Friday with the men’s team winning its race and the women placing sixth.

Senior Miles Batty finished the race in first overall on the men’s side, while senior Morgan Haws finished second overall for the women.

The men’s team finished first with a low total of 46 points. Florida State came in second with a score of 93.

Men’s head coach Ed Eyestone said Friday was a great day for the Cougars and a great performance by the team.

“The race went about as well as it could have,” Eyestone said. “It was a very solid, strong day for us and the guys really put it together and ran well. It was one of the best team performances I have seen from this team, especially in a big invitational like this.”

The men ran a 5-mile race with 205 participants. Batty led the pack with a time of 23:59.

BYU’s other top runners were sophomore Jared Ward who finished fourth with a time of 24:03 and junior Rex Shields in sixth place with a time of 24:10.

Eyestone said these three runners finishing in the top six helped solidify the win for the Cougars.

Batty talked about his game plan while running.

“Early on there were quite a few runners that were up front, pushing the pace, so I tried to just stay up front and not worry too much about what they were doing,” Batty said. “I tried to run a steady pace and after about halfway I felt a lot better and I was able to kind of take the lead and go from there.”

BYU is currently ranked No. 14 in the national polls. By placing first, the team was able to beat the three teams that are ranked above them: No. 3 Stanford, No. 10 Florida State and No. 12 Princeton.

The women also performed well while running a 5K and finished with a total of 254 points.

Women’s head coach Patrick Shane said he was happy with how his team performed and has improved this season.

“The meet went really well,” Shane said. “I felt really good about our team effort. It was a lot better than last week team wise and our girls really stepped up.”

Haws finished second overall for her second week in a row, with a time of 17:02. Junior Katy Andrews also performed well for the women’s team and finished 40th with a time of 17:42.

Shane said the performances of Haws and Andrews show their talents and abilities to help with the teams’ success this year.

“Morgan Haws showed how talented she already is and Katy Andrews came in with a clutch performance,” Shane said. “Both of their performances were very promising and as the year goes on that’s a great thing for us.”

Haws said she thought it was a good team performance that everyone was pleased with.

“Our team got out really well and we stuck together and worked together as a team and it turned out really well,” Haws said. “We were all really happy with our race.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams’ next competitions will be Oct. 14 at the Wisconsin Invitational.

 

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email