ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— It’s championship time in New Mexico.Postseason cross country starts Friday at the Mountain West Cross Country Championships in Logan, Utah.
The men’s 8K will start the championships at 10 a.m. MT with the women’s 6K to follow at 10:45 a.m. Live results can be found HERE and FloTrack will be streaming the race, which can be found HERE, but will require a subscription.
Held at the Steve and Dona Reeder Cross Country Course, the Lobo women will look to extend their 11-year win streak and will look to extend the trend of having the individual champion as they have done for the past three years. In the 11-year span, the Lobos have had six individual champions.
Lining up for the Lobos at the championship race will be Alexandra Harris, Juanita Johnson, Weini Kelati, Ednah Kurgat, Gracelyn Larkin, Hannah Nuttall, Brenda Rosales-Coria, Lydia Hallam and Adva Cohen. Cohen is making her 2019 cross country debut after missing previous races due to competing for Israel at the World Championships.
For the men, representing the Cherry an Silver will be Nehemiah Cionelo, Toby Cooke, Reece Donihi, William Fuller, Jared Garcia, Kristian Uldbjerg Hansen, Harrison Smith III and Max Wharton.
Junior Kelati enters the race as the defending individual champion after winning the race by over 18 seconds with a time of 19:49.3. Finishing behind her was the 2017 Mountain West individual champion, Ednah Kurgat, who ran the 6K race in 20:07.4. The Lobos had three of the top finishers with Charlotte Prouse at 20:11.3, with all three earning first-team All-Mountain West.
The Lobos edged out Boise State 33 to 35 for the win, with Adva Cohen finishing ninth (20:57.2) and Sophie Eckel 18th at 21:25.8 to round out the team scoring.
In the men’s race, the Lobos finished sixth with 144 points with Jonny Glen finishing in 22nd at 25:27.9 to be the top finisher. However, the men return the majority of the scorers from last year in Toby Cooke, Jared Garcia, Iolo Hughes and Reece Donihi, with Donihi named the Mountain West Male Freshman of the Year a season ago.
Historically, the Lobo men won the team title six times spanning from 2009-14 and have had five individual champions with the last being Luke Caldwell in 2012.
UNM is coming off of a ninth-place showing for the women and a 27th-place result for the men at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational back on Oct. 18 in which Kelati finished runner-up in the women’s “A” race to lead the Lobos and William Fuller finished as UNM’s top men’s runner for the second straight meet.