LUBBOCK, Texas (Nov. 6, 2021) – Five Oklahoma Christian cross country runners posted career-best times for 6,000 meters as the Eagles raced Saturday morning in the NCAA Division II South Central Region Championship on the Chaparral Ridge Cross Country Course.
Kenya Bailey, Rebecca Morales,
Caroline Schwab,
Emma Davison and
Payton Duesing all had their top times ever, helping the Eagles to a 16th-place finish in an elite 25-team field that included nine teams ranked in the top 30 in Division II. OC posted a team score of 468 points and finished sixth among Lone Star Conference teams in the field, after a sixth-place finish two weeks ago in the LSC Championship race.
Adams State (Colo.) won with a team score of 30, well ahead of runner-up Colorado School of Mines (97).
Bailey, a junior from Ponca City, Okla., who's established herself among the LSC's elite distance runners, finished 31st among 174 runners with a time of 21:42.2, which was more than a minute better than her previous top 6,000-meter time. Bailey now must wait until Monday to find out if she earned a spot in the Division II Championship race in two weeks in Tampa, Fla.
Morales, a senior from Riverside, Calif., was the Eagles' No. 2 runner for a second straight meet, finishing 91st in 23:25.0. A pair of juniors, Schwab of Andover, Kan. (113th in 24:00.0) and Davison of Mason City, Iowa (115th in 24:03.2), finished just steps apart. Duesing, a junior from Lantana, Texas, was 141st in 24:52.8.
OC's other runners Saturday were junior
Janaya McIntosh of Ganado, Ariz. (162nd in 26:15.5) and freshman
Jayme Cole of Muskogee (173rd in 30:02.80).
Briana Robles of Adams State won the individual title with a time of 20:24.3.
