The Pepperdine cross-country team continues to impress its fans by successfully accomplishing the West Coast Conference Championships on Saturday, Oct. 29.
Senior Kenny Smith was one of the first members of the team to cross the finish line.
The Waves senior Lauren Lodge distinguished her performance at the tournament by finishing fifth at the league meet and earning All-WCC honors. She took 19th place overall in the women’s 6k at the Crystal Springs course finishing with a time of 21:57.
The hours of intense practices payed off as Pepperdine team significantly improved its speed and endurance by showing better results comparing to those of the last year.
Senior Anaesha Lawrence improved her performance on two minutes by taking 35th place with the time of 22:41. In men’s team, the leading runners were junior Jonathan Jonathan Rahaeuser, senior Jordan Wozniak , and freshman David Bermea.
“it was nice because we already had two other races earlier in the season in norcal near our conference course so we were all very familiar to the race course itself “, said senior Aneasha Lawrence, “Even though it was a really tough race, we all were really strong mentallyand raced well. I was able to set a new personal best by 2 minutes while Adie, one of the other girls on the team improved by 1 minute.
This is the last time that the conference race will be held on that course so it definitely was bitter sweet since those of us who are seniors have ran on that course since preseason of our freshman year. We have one more race left and that is the regional race that is being held at Stanford.”
“We already ran there once already earlier in the season, so were expecting everyone to improve. The race is in two weeks and then we will take a short break before we start training for track season.”
The Waves women team took eighth place, while the men’s team came to finish ninth.
“Everyone that’s in good shape ran as fast as they ever have. This was a good competition”, said coach Robert Radnoti in a press release, “Everyone’s in good spirits. They recognized all of the seniors at the post-meet banquet, and we had the most seniors along with San Francisco. They were nicely honored, and that was neat.”
The team is excited to return to action on Saturday, Nov. 12 at the NCAA West Regional, which will take place in Stanford University.
