Posted: Sep 17, 2022

Cross Country Places 4th in Southwestern Showdown

GEORGETOWN, Texas -- Texas Lutheran Men's and Women's Cross Country competed in the Southwestern Showdown Saturday morning in Georgetown, Texas. The field featured six Division-III teams: Trinity (TX), McMurry, Southwestern, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Schreiner, and Texas Lutheran.

MEN'S RECAP

Sophomore Carlos Cura (Midkiff/Rankin) led the Bulldogs with a time of 27:50.1 to finish 11th overall. Freshman Lucas Falcon (Victoria/Victoria East) tallied a 27th place finish with a time of 29.20.1.

Cole Schuetz (Corpus Christi/London) crossed with a time of 29:36.0 to finish 30th.

Kevin Vazquez-Arredondo (Austin/Del Valle) and Isaiah Arriaga (Sugar Land/Dulles) rounded out the top five for the Bulldogs. As a team, the Bulldogs averaged a time of 29:19 to finish in fourth place.

WOMEN'S RECAP

In the women's meet, it was Mackenzie Payne (Celina/Frisco Heritage) leading the way finishing 17th with a time of 25:38.4. Caeli Taylor (Tilden/McMullen County), last week's SCAC Women's Cross Country Runner of the Week, followed close behind Payne - posting a time of 25:53.1 to finish 22nd. Following Taylor was freshman Emma Etzler (Hallettsville/Hallettsville) posting a time of 26:36.6.

Gianna Kennedy (El Paso/El Paso) and LeeAnndrea Canas (Corpus Christi/West Oso) rounded out the top 5 for the Bulldogs. As a team, the Bulldogs averaged a 6K time of 26:56 to finish fourth.

Coach Holland's comments: "Sometimes the score doesn't indicate the progress being made. For both the men and women, this is the longest race distance-wise that we have run. It's difficult to chart the progress since we previously ran shorter distances, but I can see that they have improved. And not just a little bit, but drastically from performances thus far.

For the women, I think that Mackenzie (Payne) ran one of the best races I've seen her run in cross country - if not THE best she's run - over the past four years at TLU. She got in there and competed! There's definitely room for a lot of improvement on everyone's part, and our ultimate goal is to race fast when it counts most at Conference. This was the Conference course so now we have a glimpse of what we need to work on daily in our practices. We had a tough week of workouts leading into this meet. As a result, legs felt a little heavy, and we need to learn to mentally push through feeling sluggish. We are going to incorporate ANY hill we can find in Seguin into workouts every week, and we look forward to arriving on this same course at the end of the season well prepared and ready to take on everyone in our conference.

Sophomore Carlos Cura made a statement in the men's race over the 8K distance. This was the first meet that he was TLU's top runner. He took off from the start and never looked back. The men's team continues to learn to race these longer distances. As they mature over the season, improvement in times and placings will follow! We have an excited group who is willing to put in the work, so I know we'll be ready when it really counts."

FULL RACE RESULTS CAN BE FOUND AT: https://www.tfrrs.org/results/xc/20098/Southwestern_Showdown

Texas Lutheran will compete in the Concordia Cross Country Classic in Austin, Texas, on Friday, September 23, with the women's race starting at 7:45 PM and the men's meet starting at 8:30 PM. For all updates on Texas Lutheran Cross Country, follow @tluxctf on Instagram as well as all official TLU Athletics accounts.