CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The Anderson University men's and women's cross-country teams are preparing for the Queen City Invite in Charlotte, N.C. on Friday (Sept. 24).
Both teams are coming off a third place finish in the Converse Regional Preview last weekend. For the women, in a field of 206 runners, the Trojans had three top-ten finishers as Whitney Hanson (22:20.3), Faith Nelson (22:28.5), and Olivia Rish (22:39.2) finished in fifth, sixth, and seventh place. Elise Matthews came in 22nd with a time of 23:32.7, meanwhile Hagan Wilson came in 45th at 24:13.4.
For the men, freshman Spain Vaughan led the way for the Trojans by finishing in seventh place in a field of 268 runners with a time of 25:46.3. Daniel Similton came in 18th with a time of 26:24.8, while Philip Quillen came in 24th by running a 26:35.7. David Mahnke (26:47.3) placed 28th, and Matthew Burgess (26:50.1) placed 31st. These performances propelled the men to a fourth place USTFCCCA Southeast Regional Ranking, with the women ranking fifth in the poll.
"This will be one of the largest meets we go to all season as 40+ teams will be racing," said coach Kevin Eagle. "This is also the same course that the SAC Championships will be run on in 4 weeks. I want our athletes to work on race execution as we gear up for the championship portion of our schedule. Our runners know that this is also a fast course, so I know they want to go out there and push themselves to see how fast they can truly run."
The Trojans will kickoff the Queen City Invite on Friday (Sept. 24) with the women running at 4:15 PM, and the men at 5:00 PM. Results can be found at www.autrojans.com.
