ACU’s second cross country meet of the season found success for the men, barely trailing behind Baylor for a three point loss. The women’s team lost 39-21 to the Lady Bears’ cross country team.
“Coming into the meet we wanted to take advantage of the chance to compete,” said junior cross country runner Kevin Kipkosgei. “We don’t know about the future, and we are just trying our best.”
Kipkosgei came in third, leading ACU in the 8k with a time of 25:18.10. For the women, senior Briahna Gerlach led ACU, coming in second with a time of 17:27.65 for the 6k.
“The biggest takeaways tonight were being consistent and strong the last mile,” said Gerlach. “A lot of was mentality and staying strong for the whole race.”
ACU men’s took home four of the top seven places in the meet while in the women’s section ACU placed twice out of the top seven places.
“We did have some worries about being able to race, with many teams deciding to cancel up until the last few hours,” said Gerlach. “It was definitely worrying, but even if we didn’t run the race against Baylor, we would have still done time-trails.”
Friday’s meet was meant to also include Texas Tech and UTEP, but both schools had to cancel, leaving the meet to be an ACU/Baylor race.
“We know we are not guaranteed any amount of races this year, so we are trying to take every race we have as a very important race,” said assistant coach Jarvis Jelen.
The only meet ACU competed in this season was the Abilene Christian Intrasquard Sep. 5 prior to the match. The next meet will be the Naimadu Classic held at ACU on Oct. 17 in Abilene.
