SAN ANTONIO ? The UTSA men’s and women’s cross country teams will travel to Waco, Texas, to compete in the NCAA South Central Regional held this Saturday, Nov. 15, at Cottonwood Creek Golf Course.
The women’s 6,000-meter race is scheduled for 10 a.m., followed by the men’s 10k at 10:45 a.m. The Roadrunners will compete against teams from the states of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. For complete meet information and results, click here.
The field for the NCAA Championships will be determined at nine regional meets around the country on Saturday. Thirty-one teams and 38 additional individual qualifiers per gender (a total of 255 runners per gender) will compete in the NCAA Championships set for Monday, Nov. 24, in Terre Haute, Ind. The top two teams at each of the nine regional championships meets (seven-person teams) automatically qualify for the championships meet. The first four individuals from each region (36 total) who are not on a qualifying team automatically advance to the NCAA Championship. Thirteen additional at-large teams and two additional at-large individuals will be selected by the committee on Nov. 16 using the selection criteria outlined in the championships handbook. All individual qualifiers must finish in the top 25 in their regions.
UTSA is coming off a solid showing at the Southland Conference Championships on Nov. 3 in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Junior Dana Mecke won the first women’s individual league crown since 1996 and fourth in program history to guide the Roadrunners to a fifth-place team showing. The Smithson Valley High product covered the 6k Piney Woods Country Club loop in a time of 21:39 to hold off runner-up Anne Ronoh of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi by eight seconds. Freshman Kayla Pratt clocked a 23:00 to finish 16th overall, while sophomore Jayde James was 40th in 24:24. Freshman Courtney Nelson and sophomore Baylee Holder placed 45th (24:43) and 51st (25:02), respectively.
Mecke finished 65th with a time of 23:04.1 at last year’s NCAA South Central Regional held in Fayetteville, Ark., the best finish by a UTSA female runner since Veronica Silva placed 50th in 2005. The last time the women competed as a team at the regional meet, they finished 14th in 2004, also at Cottonwood Creek.
Freshman Layne Nixon placed 16th to lead the men to a sixth-place finish at the conference meet. He clocked a 26:12 on the 8k course to cross as the first Roadrunner for the sixth time in seven meets this season. Fellow freshman Michael Cook joined Nixon in the top 25, crossing in 26:35 for 24th. Freshman Cole Reveal was 28th in 26:54, while junior transfer Jake Orndorff and freshman Albert Cardenas rounded out the top five in 35th (27:11) and 42nd (27:29), respectively. Junior Corey Vargas and freshman Ivan Garcia also raced, finishing 48th (27:43) and 66th (28:59), respectively.
Benson Cheserek owns the men’s top regional finish in the past five years, placing 48th in 2006. Vargas, the only current male with regional experience, was 111th at that same meet in Waco. The last time the men raced as a full squad at the regional meet, they finished 16th in 2004.
