Friday, December 6, 2013

Cross Country: Roadrunners finish seventh at Conference USA Championships

The UTSA Men’s Cross Country team competed in the Conference USA Cross Country Championship on Saturday, November 2, 2013. The Roadrunners finished in seventh place during their first time competing at the C-USA Conference Championship. That’s right, this was the first time in the UTSA Cross Country program’s short tenure that the Roadrunners have even qualified to compete in the Conference Championship. This may not sound like much of an achievement, however, considering the competition that the Roadrunners were up against this season in the C-USA, qualifying and then placing seventh, should be considered quite a successful season.

First of all, it is not easy to qualify for the Conference USA Cross Country Championship Meet. In order to do so, a team must have a specific team average time for an 8K run, or five miles. This average time was around 27 minutes, which rounds out to about 5:24 minutes per mile for those of you with no perspective to competitive race times. Throughout their season, the Roadrunners ran well and met this average time, and qualified for the C-USA Championship Meet for the first time ever.

Qualifying is only the first accomplishment that the men’s team has garnered this season. After qualifying for a tough Conference USA Championship race, the Roadrunners finished in a respectable seventh place, beating several veteran Cross Country programs in the process. The UTSA men’s Cross Country team finished ahead of reputable programs such as Tulane, Louisiana Tech, Marshall and East Carolina, amongst others.
 
Nathan Collier led the Roadrunners with a 27th-place performance. 
Leading the way for the Roadrunners was Nathan Collier who finished in 27th place with a time of 25:47 and was the Roadrunners' top finisher for the second time this fall. Harvinder Singh (30th/25:54.56), Tony Jaramillo (41st/26:16.04), Javier Salas (46th/26:25.55) and Saul Vasquez (58th/26:43.47) rounded out the team's scorers. Three-time defending champion Tulsa accounted for 26 points and set a league record with its fourth consecutive Conference USA Championship. North Texas (63) and Rice (97) rounded out the top three squads (UTSA Athletics).

After greatly improving over the course of the 2013 season, the Roadrunners will be back in action next fall with a team that should improve even more. With four of the top five runners returning next season, the Roadrunners look to improve on their latest season and compete for the Conference USA Cross Country Championship next season. 

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