October 12, 2009

Lady Tiger runners dominate Dave Burgess Invitational

With nine of the top-14 finishers at Saturday’s Dave Burgess Invitational held in Overland Park, the No. 4-ranked Cowley College women’s cross country team easily won the meet.

With seven Jayhawk Conference Eastern Division schools represented at the meet, Cowley showed it was the cream of the crop as they finished 26 points better than second place Johnson County, which competed without its top-two runners.

“This was kind of a conference preview in a sense although Johnson County did not have its top-two runners,” Cowley head coach Vince DeGrado said. “It’s tough to get up for a meet when it’s 32 degrees, but they did a good job. This is the first meet we have been to where I left happy with everybody’s performance.”

As has been the story all season long, sophomore Robin Ray ran another great race as she won the 3.1-mile race with a time of 18:51.27. Ray finished more than 28 seconds ahead of runner-up Temer Yimer, who ran unattached from any team.

“Robin led from the (starting) gun, she took control of the race and just kept pushing,” DeGrado said.
Freshmen Valerie Bland (19:50.87) and Leigh Ann Omarkhail (19:53.30) placed third and fourth, while Cecilia Burley (20:16.27), Bailey Hawkins (20:58.11), and Marvia Lewin (20:59.58) placed fourth through sixth, respectively.

Cassy Kendrick (21:16.81), Elly Adamson (21:20.21), and Jessica Dyer (21:24.49) finished 12th through 14th as all nine of the Lady Tiger runners at the meet finished amongst the top-14 finishers. There were 37 competitors in the women’s race, which was ran on the same course that will be used for the Jayhawk Conference/Region VI meet on Saturday, Oct. 24.

“I wanted them to treat Saturday’s meet like it was the conference meet,” DeGrado said. “It was good that the ladies got a feel for the course. I want them to come into the conference meet with a chip on their shoulders because we haven’t done anything yet. We have only won meets in the regular season, not in the postseason. If we go out and run the way we have all year then we should be conference and region champions, but we have got to do it on that day.”