By kyle paul
This past weekend at the Bill Dellinger Invitational, hosted by the University of Oregon, Vandals cross country once again showed their ability to keep up with teams ranked at the national and regional level. The men’s team placed fourth and the women’s team placed fifth.
This comes a week after a meet where they finished closely behind a ranked Washington team.
The Idaho women posted a team score of 131, finishing closely behind nationally ranked Oregon, Wisconsin, Oregon State and Portland. Sophomore Hannah Kiser had another impressive showing with a 5000m time of 16:45.71, placing first overall and continuing her undefeated season against collegiate competition.
“I was kind of just waiting for everyone to kick past me and it didn’t happen, didn’t happen,” Kiser said. “My coach (Wayne Phipps) was screaming at me like never before.”
The men’s team put up a score of 110, placing four athletes in the top 24 to finish behind No.2 Wisconsin, No.8 Wisconsin and Southern Utah. Idaho senior Stephane Colle finished 14th (11th among college runners) with an 8000m time of 24:06.45. Junior Barry Britt finished three places behind him with a time of 24:11.81.
Other Idaho women placing were sophomores Emily Paradis and Alycia Butterworth, who finished 22nd with a time of 17:24.64 and 31st with a time of 17:30.95 respectively. Senior Anna Kalbrener, placed 42nd in 17:50.15 and senior Julia Veseth finished 46th in 17:56.48.
To round out the scoring for the Vandal men’s team, were seniors Markus Geiger who finished 18th in 24:14.63, and Jeremiah Dubie who finished 24th with a time of 24:23.23, and junior Jeff Osborn who finished 64th.
Oregon’s women’s team, who finished first overall with a team score of 26 points, put all five of their scoring runners in the top ten, while the Wisconsin men’s team finished with five scorers in the top ten as well. The top male finisher was Cameron Levins of Southern Utah, who had a time of 23:10.51.
The focus at practice will now switch towards preparations for the championship season with only the Bronco Invite remaining. The Vandals will travel to Santa Clara, Calif. in two weeks and to Honolulu, Hawaii for the WAC Championships on Oct. 29.