“I'm half happy, half kind of disappointed,” is how Concord Cross Country Mike Cox described his perspective on the Mountain Lions' performance at the WVIAC Championships Saturday morning.
Cox was happy that the underdog Concord Women finished a strong third. At the same time he was let down that the CU Men, expected to contend for the title, also finished in third on a bit of a sloppy course in Glenville, WV.
Freshman Chelsea Callaway paced the women's team with a sixth-place finish on the 6K course. Rachel Williams was 12th, multi-sport standout Danielle Pye was 14th and Carly Stout 15th. Tabitha Whited rounded out Concord's top five, coming in at 29th.
“I was really pleased with the women,” Cox said. “We were rated fifth all year, so to finish third, to finish as high as we did, I'm proud of that. I'm very happy for them.”
West Virginia Wesleyan took the team title with 69 points. Seton Hill was second with 75 points, and Concord was just one more point further back.
“We were right there at the end, in a meet where a lot people didn't think we had a chance,” said Cox. “Especially on a really muddy, challenging course.”
For the complete women's results from wvrunners.com, click here:
wv.milesplit.us/meets/56240/results/106085
On the men's side, Robby Peters and Nathan Rees led the Mountain Lions by finishing 8th and 9th, respectively.
The rest of CU's top five also finished in a bunch – Craig Pritt 14th, Lance McDaniel 15th and Nick Lucento 16th.
Seton Hill and West Virginia Wesleyan tied for the top spot, each with 51 team points. Concord finished with 68 points.
“With the men, I'm kind of disappointed. We just didn't have it today,” said Cox. “We just didn't get it done as a team. It's not like we had a bad day, but we're better than what we showed today.
“Hopefully this'll be motivation for regionals in two weeks. We were ranked sixth in the region for a while, and then we had a bad race today so we'll probably drop out, but like I said we can do a lot better than what we did.”
For the complete men's results from
wvrunners.com, click here:
wv.milesplit.us/meets/56240/results/106084
The NCAA Atlantic Regional meets, for the women and men, will be in Mansfield, PA on Saturday, November 7.
