Tiger cross country teams take part in large meet at University of Nebraska

The Cowley College men's and women's cross country team's second test of the season took place Saturday at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. This was the first time the teams had competed at Mahoney Park Golf Course, with over 300 runners in each race.

The University of Kansas, Nebraska, Wichita State, Creighton, Omaha, Drake, and several other NCAA, NAIA, and other JUCO schools were present.

"This was good to see how we navigated our way through massive crowds and run our race against varyingly different levels of competition," Cowley head coach Cameron Rieth said.

Lady Tiger sophomore Dheniffer Vaz (19:26.9) and freshman Kayli Myers (19:33.7) led the team after the team's top runner, Leticia Belo, was held out due to a back injury.

"Our ladies crushed it; most ran around a minute faster than we did our first meet and looked more confident handling the distance on a much hillier/ harder course as well," Rieth said."Dheniffer and Kayli are just fantastic to work with; they are gaining more and more confidence with each week."

Lakota Schultz also had a personal best time of 20:50.0, while Britt Hunter (21:12.0) and Lili-Rose Breheret (22:04.0) also had solid days and rounded out the scoring for the Lady Tigers. "Our pack time is much better than is shown in the results; we just need to focus on getting better, and our fourth and fifth runners need to make the gap closer to our third runner."

On the men's side, it was a different story.

"I am not sure if the big names across the fronts of the jerseys made us timid or if I just did a little bit too much overcoaching," Rieth said. "We started out way too slow, which is very hard to make up because, in a race this size and massive gaps in talent level, it is hard to navigate your way through all of those runners to get up to where you should be. However, what a great learning experience. We have a bunch of runners in new leadership positions on this team, and they are figuring out pacing and efforts in real-time at new distances, which is not easy to do."

Mason Bickle led the Cowley men by finishing with a time of 27:05.3 in the 8K race. Fellow Tigers Austin Schaeffer (27:10.9) and Mason Blochowiak (27:13.9) were just behind Bickle.

"These guys were a solid three-way punch again to lead our squad," Rieth said.

Other Tiger runners were Kevin Rivas-Guillen (27:35.2), Deshawn Douglas (27:44.5), Elio Rivera (28:09.2), Manuel Leos (29:29.4), and Korbin Woods (30:34.5).

"Deshawn Douglas had an amazing first 8k of his running career," Rieth said. "For being a mid-distance specialist, I am really proud of his effort and how hard he works to get better at something that does not come easy for him. He has been one of our team's early season surprises for sure."

The Tiger cross country teams will have some time off before competing at the Chile Pepper Invite on Friday, September 29, in Fayetteville, AR.

"We are excited to run down there and hope the conditions are in our favor, and if they are not, so what, we will run hard and compete well," Rieth said. "We are excited to see other top-ranked national JUCO teams down there, as well as NCAA D-1 and D-2 teams, so we will get to see how we stack up."

Photo Provided by Kuba Barcik