Both Squads Claim Autumn Classic Titles

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PROVO -- On a warm overcast morning at the Clarence F. Robison Track, the BYU men’s and women’s cross country teams ran away with team titles at the 2009 BYU Autumn Classic.

The women’s team earned the victory with 34 points overall to overcome Idaho State (41) and UCLA (47) in a 5K race. Leading the way for the Cougars was sophomore Katy Andrews, who finished second overall at 18:25.6 behind UCLA’s Shannon Murakami (17:59).

Rachel Lange (4), Lacey Cramer (6), Sarah Yingling (9) and Katie Palmer (14) rounded up the top five slots to provide the total of 34 points. Freshman Nicole Nielsen, running unattached for BYU, came in tenth place overall to account for Palmer’s 14th-place finish giving the Cougars 13 points rather than 14.

“I liked our team strategy to run as a pack,” said BYU women’s head coach Patrick Shane. “Hats off to Katy who ran a great race individually. I like our team’s depth – they went out and got the job done and they’ve trained very well in the off-season to prepare for this season. We ran well together even without some of our top runners and I think we are going to have a great year.”

Sarah Edwards finished one second behind Palmer to finish as BYU’s sixth runner, while Ashlee Thomas, Sarah Hansen and Nichole Clark followed closely behind. Several freshmen and sophomore Stephanie Jensen ran unattached, enhancing the overall team effort with great finishes.

“We planned to run the first mile conservatively and run together as a pack,” Andrews said. “After awhile we found our individual battles to fight and I thought we did great. We’re feeling confident, building strong relationships with each other and learning with our individual successes.”

The men’s team performed equally well as the Cougars came in first with a nearly perfect 16 points to beat UCLA (48), Idaho State (84) and San Bernardino Valley College (106). Sophomore Miles Batty came in first place overall with a time of 19:38.3 as the Cougars claimed four of the top five spots and seven of the top 10.

Seniors Brandon Hebbert, Ryan Merriman and Richard Nelson finished within 20 seconds of Batty to provide the remaining points for the team. Alden Bahr, Nate Ogden, and Tommy Gruenewald finished in the top 10 with Travis Fuller (unattached), Reagan Frey, Jon Kotter, Jonathan Nelson (unattached) and Dylan Shawhan in close pursuit. Several other Cougars ran unattached in the 4-mile event.

“I’m very please with our depth,” said BYU men’s head coach Ed Eyestone. “We built up a pretty good lead after a few miles and to have five runners finish within 30 seconds of each other as the top runners proved to be a solid performance overall. That was a good UCLA team that we beat.”

2009 BYU Autumn Classic
        Women                                     Men
2   K. Andrews          18:25.6            1  M. Batty         19:38.3
4   R. Lange            18:32.4            2  B. Hebbert       19:44.3
6   L. Cramer           18:37.8            3  R. Merriman      19:52.9
9   S. Yingling         18:46.3            4  R. Nelson        19:58.3
14  K. Palmer           19:08.2            6  A. Bahr          20:03.3
15  S. Edwards          19:09.2            7  N. Ogden         20:15.5
20  A. Thomas           19:24.3            9  T. Gruenewald    20:16.9
26  S. Frey             19:40.8           13  R. Frey          20:27.5
29  N. Clark            19:59.2           14  J. Kotter        20:28.3 
                                          16  D. Shawhan       20:38.9
                                          39  J. Adams         21:42.3
                   Unattached BYU runners
10  N. Nielsen          18:46.6           11  T. Fuller        20:24.2
18  L. Sowards          19:17.0           15  J. Nelson        20:30.2
19  M. Laurent          19:19.7           19  A. Fletcher      20:51.6
21  K. Swanson          19:28.1           34  K. Wilcock       21:29.7
23  L. Wynn             19:33.4           42  J. Cosby         21:47.9
25  M. Callister        19:37.9           43  J. Rohatinsky    21:48.7
28  S. Jensen           19:58.3           65  N. Fletcher      23:44.9
30  T. Kussee           20:08.7 
31  K. Vidmar           20:13.6