SALEM, Ore.- After taking a week of competition off the EOU Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams returned to action at the 47th annual Charles Bowles Invitational Saturday morning. Men’s Cross Country kicked the morning off at 9:30 a.m. with the 8k race followed by the women’s 5k. The men didn’t skip a beat, finishing second as a team in a pool of 17 different schools with a total time of 2:04:52 finishing with 49 points. The Women’s Cross Country team finished at No. 11 posting a time of 1:41:34 with 306 points.
The men were once again paced by Justin Ash who finished in tenth place running a time 24:44.2. Also finishing in the top 15 for the Mountaineers were Cristian Mendoza and Hunter Nichols with times of 24:51.4 and 24:55.5. Mendoza took twelfth place followed by Nichols at 13. Winston Telford rounded out the Mountaineers in the top 20 spots finishing sixteenth with a time of 24:56.2.
EOU Men’s Cross Country had six runners finish in the top 50 of a race that totaled 204 athletes.
The Women’s Cross Country team followed soon after this morning finishing in eleventh in a 5,000 meter race. Lauryn Mitchell lead the way for the Mounties finishing forty-first in the race with a time of 19:21.2. Riley Morris finished second for the Mounties in sixty-first with a time 19:50.7. Elisabeth Young rounded out the top-three Mountaineer finishers taking seventy-eighth overall with a time of 20:22. The women had five runners finish in the top 100 of the race.
The Mountaineers return to action at the Lewis and Clark Invitational next Saturday, Oct. 8, in Estacada, Ore. The women’s race will start at 10:15 a.m. and the men’s race is slated to start at 11 a.m.