AUBURN—The Alabama State University cross country teams faced some early season stiff competition and came away with some solid performances on both the men's and women's teams at the Auburn Invitational.
The Lady Hornets finished 8
th (197 points) out of the 11 teams participating and were led by freshman
Paige Rankin who finished 18
th in the 4k event with a time of 15:18.2.
Artrailia LeSane was the next Lady Hornet to cross the finish line in 16:09.3, finishing 34th. Kim Wedderburn (16:43.0) and Shantina Wilson (16:43.6) finished 45
th and 46
th while the final point scorer
Jerrica Mahone (17:14.5) finished 54
th.
Other Lady Hornet runners were
Santina Williams (17:49.3) finishing 61
st and
Soyong Smith (19:46.6) finishing 70
th.
The men also finished eighth with 209 points in their first 6k race of the year. First-year runner
Brandon Coombs paced the Hornets crossing the finish line in 22:31.1, placing him 36
th.
James Walker (22:36.7) was right there with him crossing the finish line 38
th. Cory Nawiji (24:02.2),
Carlos Flores (24:09.0) and
Carleddy St. Jean (24:24.7) finished 44
th, 45
th and 46
th. The final runner for ASU was
Jordan Agee (24:31.6) who finished 48
th.
“We got what I thought we would get out of them this week,” Head Coach
Ritchie Beene said. “We moved up in distance and we faced some of the top competition around and I thought they responded well. We were hoping they would run a little faster, but the times in this meet this year were a lot faster than the times in the same race last year.”
“We did have some good performances, especially on the women's side. Our top two female finishers, both freshmen, actually ran faster than our seniors in last year's race.”
“On the men's side, it was good to go up there with a full team. This time last year we only had three runners and were still in the process of getting a team together, so it is good to have a full team and they are only going to get better.”
ASU will be back in action on Saturday, Sept. 15 at the Azalea City Classic. The run will be held at the Brookley Gulf Pines Golf Course in Mobile.
-Hornets-