October 12, 2009

Ali wins men’s race at Dave Burgess Invitational

Taking just four runners to compete at the Dave Burgess Invitational held Saturday in Overland Park, the No. 3-ranked Cowley College men’s cross country team got a stellar performance from sophomore transfer Abdesalam Ali as he won the men’s five-mile race by more than 27 seconds.

Ali completed the race in 27:10.11, while Johnson County’s Ryan Keene’s time of 27:37.14 placed him a distant second.

“Abde needed to get a race in,” Cowley head coach Vince DeGrado said. “He ran really well and took control of the race after the two-mile mark.”

Cowley freshman Alstin Benton was the Tigers next highest finisher as he placed 14th with a time of 29:01.90. Fellow freshmen Peter Onelio (30:12.78) and Kyle Swinicki (30:18.55) rounded out the Tiger runners at the meet by placing 24th and 25th, respectively.

The Tigers held out the majority of its regular runners following its competition at Oklahoma State University the previous weekend.

“Some of our guys were pretty fatigued and needed a weekend to recover,” DeGrado said.

Cowley did not have enough runners compete to qualify for the team scores as host Johnson County finished first with 18 team points, while Coffeyville (56 points) finished second just ahead of third place Highland Community College (63 points).

There were 36 competitors in the men’s race, which was ran on the same course that will be used for the Jayhawk Conference/Region VI meet on Saturday, Oct. 24.

“If we can compete like I know we can we should win conference,” DeGrado said. “It will be a dog fight in the region with us, Garden City, Butler and Johnson County.”