Cross country competes at RMAC Championship

Chadron State’s cross country team competed in their first RMAC Championship on Saturday in Colorado Springs at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. For it being their first season as a DII team, Head Coach Ryan Baily was quite impressed.

“They competed hard against the circumstances,” Baily said.

There were 14 women teams competing and Chadron came in eleventh. The men’s team came in twelfth out of thirteen. The women had to run a 6K race while the men ran a 10K.

For the women, Ashley Riesen, senior of Chadron, came in first for the team and 29th overall. Her time was 24:28.20, just a bit over a minute ahead of Jayme Nunes, freshman of Alliance. Nunes placed 55th overall with a time of 25:42.90. Becca Volf, freshman of Wood River, came in 60th with a time of 25:56.10.

On the men’s side, Domingo Torres, freshman of Gering, finished first for the Eagles with a time of 28:18.20. Torres finished 57th out of 105 overall. Three male runners came in the eighties range. They were Alex Johnson, senior of Kearney, Evans Koech, freshman of Nairobi, Kenya, and Nathan Faulkner, junior of Morrill. All of them ran the course within 29 minutes.

The next race for the Eagles will be the South Central Region Championships on November 3 in Denver, hosted by Regis University. Only seven runners can compete in either genders events. The top five women teams and top six teams for the men from the South Central Region Championship race qualify for the national championship event.

“We need to get everyone healthy and I want them all to have their best race of the season. That’s our plan, our goal, to run well,” Baily said.