Sept. 13, 2003
Complete Results
DAVIS, Calif. --- - Chico State swept the top six scoring finishes to score a perfect 15 points toward a team win in the men's 8K race of the annual Aggie Open cross country meet Saturday. UC Davis finished second in the meet with 48 points. Justin Hurd led the Aggie men with a 10th-place time of 25:54.40 while Matt Laye followed in 11th at 26:01.30.
On the women's side, redshirt freshman Louisa Hays finished fourth overall and teammate Laura Cherdack followed three places behind her to lead UC Davis to a narrow win in the women's 5-kilometer race.
The Aggie women scored 48 points as a team, edging Santa Clara and Chico State, each of which tied for second with 53 team points.
Chico State's Katie Lee was the overall winner with a 18:19.9 time. Virginia Johnson of Nevada and Shannon Bell of Santa Clara finished in a close two-three, with respective marks of 18:25.00 and 18:25.70.
Aggie alumnus Steve Laurie captured the 8K individual title with a time of 24:49.10.
Michelle Solone, Priscilla Moreno and Laura Sharp rounded out the Aggie women's scoring, securing respective overall finishes of 12th, 14th and 18th. UC Davis head coach Sue Williams offered much of the credit for her team's win to that group.
"It was really a tight race among the top three teams," said Williams. "Chico had the first finisher, Nevada had the second, Santa Clara had the third, and we had the fourth. So the scoring among the top runners was real tight.
"Where we got them was our pack. Chico's fifth runner scored 21, ours [Sharp] had 16. The top three runners were all right in there about the same time, so it was the fourth and fifth runners. It was definitely a team race and a team win."
Hays was somewhat a surprise finisher in the meet. According to Williams, she was 18th in the team's time trials as a true freshman in 2002, but jumped up to first in this year's trials.
While the Chico men swept the top six scoring places, UC Davis captured the next seven. Chris Ferren-Cirino took 14th overall with a 26:18.80 mark, with Tim Helms and Tony Ahr finishing immediately behind him. The Aggies had less than a minute difference between Hurd, their top runner, and Justin Rau, the team's seventh runner.
"The pack running we did was fantastic," said UC Davis assistant coach Jason Jaques. "We had a good split from one to five. That's definitely going to be our strength the whole season. To race as a team - we established that right from the get-go in the first race."
Tyler Graff led the Wildcats with a second-place overall finish. He crossed in 24:58.60, followed by Carlos Carballo of UC Berkeley, who finished third in 25:00.20.
The Aggie men and women return to action on September 27 at the Stanford Invitational.
