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Cross Country
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Friday, September 6
Twin Falls, Idaho
All Day
University of Utah
vs
CSI Invitational
#22 Cross Country Captures Second At CSI Invite
9/6/2019 7:18 PM | Cross Country
The Utes finish 10 inside the top-20.
Twin Falls, Idaho - The #22 ranked Utah cross country team competed at the CSI (College of Southern Idaho) Invitational Friday evening capturing a second-place finish as a team while junior Trina Moreno led the Utes finishing in third-place. Overall, the Utes had 13 runners competing with eight of them finishing inside the top-15.
"Trina Moreno led us and had a great opening meet of the year for her. She finished in third overall, she was in third most of the race and she will continue to improve with each race and training session we will be doing throughout the season so I'm excited for her," head coach Kyle Kepler said. "Overall, I thought we ran well. Our one to five spread was only 20 seconds, which is outstanding, and our seventh girl was only 31 seconds off our number one so that's great to see."
After not competing during the 2018 season, Moreno led the Utes in her first race back finishing the 5k course in a time of 18:28.60 to secure the third-place finish. Crossing the line right behind Moreno was freshman Karli Branch and Ellie Lundgreen finishing in sixth and seventh-place. Both Branch and Lundgreen recorded new college bests on the day and both finished with the same time of 18:45.90. Rounding out the top-five scorers for the Utes was sophomore Kennedy Powell and junior Emma Christensen. Powell and Christensen both finished with the same time of 18:48.40 while registering eighth and ninth-place finishes, respectively. With this time, Christensen earned a new personal-record.
Freshman Grace Burnett finished in 10th-place also earning a new college best time of 18:52.00 while sophomore's Sara Leonard and Brooke Manson followed in finishing in 11th and 13th-place. Leonard posted a time of 18:59.20 as Manson topped her previous best she set last week at the UVU Invite with a new personal-best time of 19:07.70.
Also competing for Utah was Jade Mulvey (16th, 19:32.42), Anna Busatto (17th, 19:33.40), Nicole Griffiths (22nd, 20:01.04), Astrid Lindgren (24th, 20:09.99) and Kaitlyn Mercer (31st, 20:30.37). With Mercer's time, she recorded a new college best topping her previous by 37 seconds.
Weber State University captured the first-place finish as a team with a total of 24 points while Utah came in second with a total of 33 points. Northwest Nazarene finished in third with 96 points, host CSI earned fourth with 109 and Westminster finished in fifth with 132 points.
"Weber State did beat us and they just had some more kids up at the front of the race than we did but it was really tight. It was a one point race until the last 50 meters and then one of their girls went around four of our girls and kind of closed the door on us," Kepler explained. "I was really pleased, we ran tough especially up the hill in the second mile of this race where everyone thought our kids answered the bell there and put us back into the race and gave ourselves a chance to comeback and win but we just ran out of room," Kepler stated.
Fans can follow the Utah cross country program on Twitter (@Utah_trackfield), Facebook (UtahTrackXC) and on Instagram (@UtahTrackXC).
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