Lobo Women Finish Second at Joe Piane Invitational

SOUTH BEND, Ind.— The No. 3 New Mexico women’s cross country team opened the Joe Piane Notre Dame Invitational with a second-place team finish on Friday behind two runners in the top-10 and all five scorers within the top-20.

Gracelyn Larkin was the first Lobo to cross the line, finishing ninth at 16:20.4, followed by Amelia Mazza-Downie at 16:21.3 for a 10^th-place finish. Samree Dishon made up seven spots in the final thousand meters to finish 13^th at 16:22.0 and Emma Heckel (16:24.5) and Elise Thorner (16:33.0) finished 16^th and 20^th, respectively, to round out the team scoring.

The Lobo women made their move in the pack towards the later stage of the race with Larkin moving up from 39^th at the mile marker to 17^th at the 4000-meter mark before finishing ninth. Mazza-Downie progressed from 79^th to 16^th to crossing the line 10^th and Dishon moved up from 42^nd to 20^th to 13^th as the race went on. Heckel remained steady at 20 at the first check point, holding at 21^st at the 4000-meter point and closed at 16^th. Like Mazza-Downie, Thorner moved up 63 spots between the first and second check point of the race to go from 82^nd to 19^th, finishing 20^th for the final Lobo scorer.

While not counting towards the team score, Danielle Verster finished 21^st at 16:33.6, Abbe Goldstein finished 29^th at 16:41.2 and Ali Upshaw finished 33^rd at 16:46.6.

As a team, the Lobos were third in the team standings at the mile point of the race and while still third at the 4000-meter point, shaved off 51 points before closing the race in second with 68 points, dropping another 25 points in the last 1000-meters.

“It was a very good first meet for the women,” commented UNM head cross country coach Joe Franklin. “All eight of them were fantastic. The most impressive takeaway from today was their ability to close the last 1000 meters. It is a very fast course, so progressing at the end of the race can be very challenging.”

On the men’s side, the Lobos were led by Kevin Mulcaire, who finished 41^st at 24:06.9, and Jonathan Carmin, who placed 46^th with a time of 24:10.3. UNM’s final three scorers were Abdirizak Ibrahim (81^st, 24:32.9), Awet Yohannes (127^th, 24:56.3) and Yehonatan Haim (135^th, 25:03.1). As a team, UNM finished 17^th in the team standings with 412 points, with Yohannes’ result counting as 119 team points and Haim’s result counting for 125 team points.

“The men continue to improve,” noted Franklin. “Abraham is just starting to train after a long sustained injury, so I expect our results to continue to improve.”

Running in the open 5000-meter race, the Lobos finished with 25 points to win the team title, beating out Boise State by 22 points for the win.

Sarah Eckel led the way with a runner-up finish at 16:51.7, with the Lobos going 2-3 after Samantha Valentine crossed a second later at 16:52.7 for third. Semira Mebr Firezghi made it three finishers in the top-10 with a sixth-place finish at 17:20.0 and Christina Nisoli finished 12^th in 17:39.7. Isabella Fauria ran 18:10.9 to finish 26^th for the final scorer. While it didn’t count towards the team total, Lauren Bettencourt completed the open run for the Lobo women in a time of 18:31.2, finishing 44^th.

However, due to unattached runners, when it came to the team point totals the Lobo point total was 1-2-3-7-12 for the final 25 points.

The Lobos return to competition again on Friday, Oct. 14 at the Wisconsin Nuttycombe Invitational in Madison, Wis. The women’s 6K will begin at 11:20 a.m. MT followed by the men’s 8K at 12 p.m. MT.