Spring Break
Repeat performance
Stephen Lu, Sports Editor, sjlu@smu.edu
Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: Sports
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As additional icing on the cake, head coach Cathy Casey earned C-USA Coach of the Year honors, for the second time. However, she gives all the credit to her girls.
"It's really the outstanding effort of the team," Casey said. "Seeing them elevate their performances is really meaningful to me: How much work they put in and the results are pretty cool."
The Mustangs faced stiff competition from an unlikely competitor: the University of Texas at El Paso, which finished second with 40 points, compared to SMU, who had 28 points.
Last year, the Miners finished in seventh-place, marking a significant improvement for UTEP. The Miners also had the individual medalist in Risper Kimaiyo and had three runners finish in the top-10.
"They were an outstanding team," said Dave Wollman, director of track and field/cross country. "Winning took a great performance from every single person. They had a great recruiting year. They brought in some really top talent and I think they were favored going into the meet. So it was nice to surprise them with the level of talent that we had."
Junior Silje Fjortoft finished second overall with a time of 18:01.6, just 15 seconds behind first-place Kimaiyo. Along with Fjortoft, four other Mustangs also finished in the top 10, three of whom were freshmen.
"In cross country, every body counts," Wollman said. "There's five runners and all of them count towards the score. If we would have not had any of the top five, we wouldn't have beaten El Paso."
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