HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The Regis men's cross country team ran down in Alabama on Saturday, placing 30th out of 45 teams. Finishing 30th also included beating a fellow south central region team, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith, and featured a team performance with five of the six runners running a personal best.
"The men had a pretty good race. They went out really hard and I think the most important thing is that five out of six of them ran their best times ever," said Regis men's cross country head coach, Evan Verbal. "That helped us beat some teams today and I'm really happy that we went in and came out beating 15 other teams, that was pretty great."
How It Happened: Graduate student Wyatt Farace finished first for the Rangers, crossing the finish line in 26 minutes, 2.9 seconds and placing 133rd overall.
Senior Judd Ogle finished in 26:12.1 and placed 154th overall. This time last year, Ogle competed at the 2022 Highlander Invitational and ran 27:02.5, his best 8K time of the 2022 season.
"Wyatt went out pretty hard and I think struggled towards the middle but finished well. Judd just ran an excellent race through and through and showed how much he's improved within the last year, dropping almost a minute between this year and last year," said Verbal.
Continuing the personal best trend was freshman Demetrious Brown, running a 28:21.2, over a minute faster than his performance at the Ted Castaneda Classic last weekend (29:32.9). Brown placed 306th overall.
San Diego-native William Oakes finished in 28:48.5 and placed 330th overall. Oakes' previous best time was 28:59.0 at the 2022 Highlander Invitational, a 10-second improvement.
Sophomore John Murphy ran a 29:04.2, placing 341st overall. Murphy's previous personal best was at the 2022 Highlander Invitational, featuring a 29:36.9 performance.
Rounding out the runners for the Rangers was senior Aaron Bennett. Bennett crossed the finish line in 30:10.2 and placed 375th overall. The Los Altos-native's previous best performance was earlier this season at the 2023 Greeno/Dirksen Invite with a time of 31:06.3.
Up Next: The Rangers return to Denver for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference championship on Oct. 21.
"Coming down here and beating some teams gives us some confidence," said Verbal. "We even got a team from the south central region today and we feel good going into the conference meet in two weeks when we have to face some pretty tough competition."
