SPRINGFIELD, Ore.- The Central Washington University cross country teams put forth strong efforts on Friday afternoon, with the men finishing 10th overall with 281 points and the women placing 11th with 324 points. Luke Hurd led the men's squad, placing 55th with a season-best time of 25:07.54. On the women's side, Maddy Harrison paced the team with a 58th-place finish, setting a new personal record of 21:54.33.
 
RACE RESULTS
On the men's side, Hurd led Central Washington with a 55th-place finish in a season-best time of 25:07.54. Kellen McIlnelly followed in 62nd place, clocking 25:22.10. Charles Naught and Dima Serafimovici finished back-to-back in 78th and 79th with times of 25:58.00 and 26:06.88, respectively. Max Hutton also posted a season best, placing 81st in 26:13.81. Ares Van Straaten and Ethan Moore rounded out the team, finishing 83rd and 84th with times of 26:25.91 and 26:32.52.

On the women's side, Harrison paced the Wildcats with a 58th-place finish in a personal-best time of 21:54.33. Payton Conover came in 73rd at 22:17.43, followed by Lillian Neff in 88th at 22:47.21. Hannah Pidduck placed 94th in 22:55.37, just ahead of Araceli Esquivel, who finished 95th in 23:00.57. Katie Manly followed closely in 96th with a time of 23:10.18, and Julie Johnson rounded out the squad's top-100 finishers in 100th place at 23:39.43.

QUOTING ASSISTANT COACH MATT LAYTEN 
"First off want to express thanks to Assistant AD for Track and Field, Josh Seitz, and the coaching and event staff at the University of Oregon for the opportunity to compete this weekend in the Bill Dellinger Invitational. They put on a first class event. We are lucky to have access to elite-level distance competition in the northwest, and many competitive schools from around the country arrived which gave us the opportunity to level up our process and our program as we look to fulfill our mission in the long run. This meet had only about 100 competitors in each race and each of our opponents were from Division I, including 2 nationally ranked programs in Oregon (#4 Women and #14 Men) and Air Force Academy (#23 Men).

Our theme for the week was to embrace this environment and also choose to do hard things when presented with an opportunity and bring that environment back into our program, training, and racing strategy. Overall our group took that challenge head on with our group of mostly sophomores and freshman. We had a few coming back from some downtime and sickness and it showed a bit in our team scores. Our guys went back and forth with a few of the UC schools throughout the 8K in terms of teams scores but we fell a bit short when we all had our teams cross the line. On the women's side, Maddy Harrison shined in this meet as she bounced back and led our group with her fastest cross country race in a very competitive field. With the character of the members of our program, their desire to be great, and the work they put in constantly, I have no doubt that this weekend made our program stronger, as this will be the first of many experiences like this for this group. I'm confident that our group will harness this experience and be back at full strength before we begin our postseason stretch run of Conference Championships in Montana, and NCAA Regionals in a few weeks."
 
UP NEXT
The Wildcats head to Seattle, Washington, on Saturday, October 11, to compete in the Emerald City Open at Lower Woodland Park. The women's 6K race will kick off the event at 10:30 a.m., followed by the men's 8K at 11:15 a.m.