Union University’s men’s and women’s Cross-Country teams raced at the Gulf South Conference (GSC) Championships on October 21st, with the men’s team placing 7th of 12 teams with a time of 2:13:04.50 and the women’s placing 4th of 13 teams with a time of 1:35:13.70.
This meet highlighted the peak of their season, with both teams working to perform at their best. The women’s team delivered, with Victoria Markham and Ayla Young finishing 18th and 19th and making 2nd team All-GSC, setting a new Union record for the 4th fastest finish.
“Coach is excited about the girl’s team because the top three finishers are all freshmen and sophomores,” Young, a sophomore cell and molecular biology major, said. “And we are not leaving, which is always the hardest part about transitioning from year to year.”
The men’s team also had one of their best races this year, finishing in the top 10 in Union’s history. According to Micah Winn, a senior business accounting major, the race was ultimately quite close.
“As the guy’s team, we wanted to get top five in the conference,” Winn said. “But realistically, we knew that we could get 4th or we could get 8th just like that with how close competition it was. Overall, I think we gave our all.”
The team will next be moving into regionals, which are slightly longer races. The women’s team will have to race for 6k instead of a 5k, and the men’s team will be racing a 10k instead of an 8k, making it hard to switch the training for the new distance.
As the Union team finished 4th in their conference, according to head coach Bailey Bell, the team is not very poised to move on to nationals; however, he sees this season’s performance as very promising for the future of Union’s team with the new records and goals being reached. Bailey says they will have to take a different perspective going into regionals, given their placement.
“Going into regionals, I’m hopeful that we can compete with and beat some of the teams that we did not beat in conference,” Bell said. “We wanna see if we can beat them when we go head-to-head with them again.”
The team will be moving to regionals and racing the NCAA D2 South Region Championships on Nov. 4.
