Cross Country takes second at Big East Championship

For the second consecutive year the No. 4 West Virginia cross country team finished second at the Big East Conference Championship Saturday.

Villanova took first place finishing with 30 points, while the Mountaineers finished 44 points off the lead with 74.

Syracuse (84), Georgetown (92) and Providence (108) rounded out the top five.

"Satisfied is a great word to describe our feelings about the weekend," said WVU head coach Sean Cleary. "We are proud to finish as runner-up in a field of this quality."

The Mountaineers were led by all-American senior Clara Grandt who notched a fifth place finish with a time of 21:20.

Fellow all-Americans Marie-Louise Asselin (21:26) and Keri Bland (21:46) finished seventh and thirteenth, respectively.

Also adding strong races were Kate Harrison (22:00) who finished in 21st place and Keri Bland who recorded a time of 22:19, good enough for 28th place.

Cleary is hopeful that his team will improve on an already impressive effort.

"Our team knows that we have better performances left in us for the remainder of the year. We are very excited to get back on the horse and prove ourselves," he said. "Being a runner-up in this league is an amazing accomplishment.

"I am very pleased that we stayed in front, but we simply must run better in the next three weeks in order to reach our goals. I have 100 percent faith that we will do so."

Although proud and satisfied with his team’s performance, Cleary takes partial responsibility for the few shortcomings experienced by the Mountaineers over the weekend.

"I kept our training volume up very high prior to the Big East Championship and thought we could still have legs that were ready to go," Cleary said. "This will not happen for the Regionals and Nationals. We will continue working hard but will start to freshen up a bit in the next ten days.

"We are not finished with the hard workouts. Our goal will be to train hard and recover."

Cleary knows that recovery will be a key to his team’s success when they travel back to Princess Anne, Md., for the NCAA Regionals on Nov. 14th.