Cross Country Opens Season

Tanner Elliott
The Paw Print

Pride, respect and honor come to mind when you think of the men and women of Adam’s cross-country program, as well as thirty-eight national championships.
The grizzly harriers will be attempting to capture the thirty-ninth and fortieth cross-country championship this fall, and Saturday, Sept. 8 was a great kick-start for the upcoming season. The men’s side brought home 19 points to win the meet, beating the defending national champions Western State by 22 points.
On the women’s side, the grizzlies took second with 31 points, but only losing by 2 points to Western State. However, the women’s side did sit out all-American Kelly Lamb as well as redshirting Alyssa Selve for the home opener.
“There is always when you run a meet, you have these ideas formulated in your head on who is going to do what, and not on how this kid is going to beat this kid, but how they do in practice leads you to believe this is going to be the results in the meet,” said Head Coach Damon Martin. “On the guys side, I didn’t know how the outcome would come. Western didn’t run their best runner, but ran a good group of kids. On the girl’s side, Western beat us by a couple of points, but I redshirted a lot of girls.”
Freshman Kevin Batt from Sydney, Australia took the victory in the nineteenth annual Joe I. Vigil Invitational with a 25:34 for the eight-kilometer distance.
“I had only been here for two and half weeks to train, therefore I knew I wasn’t in great shape. Luckily the pace went out slow and once I got within the last mile I know I have great mile speed so it would be alright,” said Batt.
Coming in second was sophomore Tabor Stevens from Canon City, Colorado with a time of 25:37. “: My goal was to make the race as easy as possible, sit in the back and when the time came, go do some work and make sure we win as a team,” said Stevens.
Third Place finisher was junior Jovanny Godinez with a 25:48. Rounding out the top five was David Sanchez in fifth place and Matt Daniels in eighth place. “This was my third Joe I. Vigil and it felt much easier, altitude felt much better, as you go it gets much easier.”
Leading the women’s team from Adams was senior Alicia Nelson. Following in fourth was Lauren Martin, Jesse Brunett in ninth, Tracee Van der Wyk in tenth, and rounding up the top five was Tayler Warren in twelfth. “My goal was to run as hard as I could, and to hopefully beat Western, add Alyssa we did that unofficially.”
Adams’ State top nine men and women will be competing at the Stanford Invite in Palo Alto, California on Sept. 29.  “Seek out the best possible competition we could find that’s adequate to us,” said Coach Martin, “Over the years we have been able to elevate our program to one of those top ten to fifteen programs in the country regardless off division.”
Over the past years Adams has always ran at some of the premier Division I invitationals, such as at Minnesota, Arkansas, Oklahoma State, Colorado, and Iona.
Both Adams State’s men’s and women’s cross country teams will run again on Sept. 29 at the Stanford Invitational in Stanford, Calif. The Invitational will begin at 10:50 a.m.
They will then compete in the Metro State Invitational on Oct. 6.

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