In what has become a tradition, the Colorado cross country teams won both the men’s and women’s team titles on Saturday in the 32nd running of the Rocky Mountain Shootout at the Buffalo Ranch Cross Country Course on CU’s South Campus.
Both teams performed quite well. The women scored 16 points to best Northern Colorado (42) in the NCAA Division I race, while the men totaled 17 points to best Air Force (55), Colorado State (76) and Northern Colorado (93).
CSU-Pueblo won the non-Division I women’s race with 31 points and also took the men’s non-Division I title (20).
Junior Val Constien led the women’s team in the 5.8-kilometer race, finishing in 21 minutes and 34 seconds. She was second to Lindsey Koch, an unattached runner who finished in 21:12. Constien was the first of four uniformed CU runners to finish in the top six. Taylor Tuttle was fourth (22:04), Cayla Seligman placed fifth (22:08) and Karina Mann was sixth (22:09).
“”Well, as you know, today was a look at some emerging varsity people. We’re allowed to run up to ten in the Pac-12 meet,” coach Mark Wetmore said. “We took eight yesterday to Notre Dame, so we’re looking at the eighth, ninth and tenth people to see who fills out the squad a month from now. Val looked good. I think this was her best race ever and this was a difficult course.”
Annie Kelly was the Buffs fifth scorer, finishing 14th overall in 22:28. Another Buff, Karina Mann, placed 31st overall after recording a time of 23:25.
Junior Chris Herrick was the top finisher for the Buffs in the men’s 8-kilometer race, finishing fifth overall in 25:54. His teammate, Reilly Friedman, was just behind him in sixth (25:57). The Buffs also took seventh place with Mark Tedder clocking in at 26:02.
“I think it went well today,” Herrick said. “We didn’t know what the conditions were going to be coming in with whether or not the course would be too muddy or not, but it turned out the course was in pretty good shape.”
CU’s men have won the last 27 shootout titles and 28 of the last 32. The women have won 19 straight titles and 25 of the last 26 races.
