Texas men\u2019s and women\u2019s cross country had stellar season-opening performances at the Floyd Farms Invitational in Lampasas, Texas, on Friday.<\/p>\n
Despite the poor weather, both te-ams ended the day with 15 points, the best possible team score.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s a cross country course, so we\u2019re not expecting perfect conditions,\u201d freshman Kai McCullough said.<\/p>\n
The Longhorn men crossed the finish line as one group, taking the first seven places in the 5K race. Only eight-tenths of a second separated the seven runners.<\/p>\n
The Longhorns summarized their focus in one word: consistency.<\/p>\n
After training together throughout the offseason, the opening meet allowed them to test their fitness and become more comfortable racing as a group, especially with several freshmen running for Texas for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good to race with the freshmen for the first time,\u201d senior Zain Hamdani said. \u201cIt was good to build that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sophomore Aidan Torres earned the individual victory with a time of 16:15.3, with Hamdani finishing milliseconds behind with the same official time. Senior Hudson Benn-ett placed third with a time of 16:15.4, followed by McCullough with 16:15.9.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Joaquin De La Cruz and freshman Griffen Saacke tied for fifth with 16:16.0. Freshman Colby Huntress finished one-tenth of a second later to secure seventh.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The rain) made the course pretty muddy, so gripping was a little tough out there, especially on the hills,\u201d Hamdani said. \u201cWe were sliding around a little bit, but I think we got the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Texas women were equally dominant, taking the first five places in their 5K race. Senior Aishling Callanan crossed the finish line first in 19:11.2. Junior Isabel Conde de Frankenberg followed with a 19:15.4.<\/p>\n
Freshmen Lili Denton and Cara Sims finished third and fourth in 19:42.4 and 19:52.2. Junior Grace Kowalski closed out the Longhorns\u2019 top five by finishing fifth in 19:54.1.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday showed that we\u2019re pretty fit and ready for the season,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
Texas will travel to College Station on Friday for the Texas A&M Invitational, where both teams will look to build on what they accomplished in Lampasas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas men\u2019s and women\u2019s cross country had stellar season-opening performances at the Floyd Farms Invitational in Lampasas, Texas,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-429275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}