Greenville, S.C. -- Led once again by
Drew Zink and
Katherine Hopkins, the Catamount cross country squads posted a pair of strong finishes at the Furman Invitational, with the men's team taking fourth and the women's team taking fifth in their respective races.
The women's team scored 160 points on the day, with all five scoring runners earning sub-40 marks all the way through.
Katherine Hopkins once again led the women's team, taking a 38th place finish, contributing only 25 points to the Catamount total thanks to her time of 23:18.6. She was followed by
Peyton Skoglund, freshman
Braelyn-Shae Wahy,
Sara Klemm, and
Riley McKinney as the Catamount scoring five posted top-60 finishes. Finishing right behind the scoring quintet was
Amaya Hicks,
Landey Green,
Hannah Kliner, and
Alesea Caldwell as all nine competing Purple and Gold women's runners finished within the top-80 of the finishing 104 runners.
As for the men's team, the Catamounts jockeyed with SoCon foe VMI for most of the day as the two teams were neck and neck at fourth and fifth in the team scores through all three splits. The Keydets top two runners crossed just before
Drew Zink, who finished 25th on the day, and another Keydet took 28th before the Catamount depth prevailed. The Purple and Gold's second through sixth runners all finished before VMI's fourth runner did as the Catamounts secured their place in the final team standings with 122 points, just beating out VMI who finished with 129. Zink was followed in the finishing order for the second week in a row by freshman transfer
Logan Gullett, who took 30th with a time of 18:57.0.
Lawson Mecom (33rd),
John Davis (34th), and freshman
Noah Luke (48th) all rounded out the Catamount scoring five as
Justin Hayes finished close behind at 53rd.
Knox Witherspoon,
Peter Schihl,
Matthew Womack, and
Calvin Smith all posted sub 20:50 times as all Catamount men's runners earned top-75 finishes on the day.
"I'm very excited about how we did this weekend. Our training load has been incredibly high over the past couple of weeks yet we competed well and dug deep," said head Coach
Jesse Norman. "Having two ladies make the all-time 6K list is great. As a team, our focus was to tighten up the backend of our roster and I feel both groups did a great job with that. For the men to get fourth place, being as close as we were to a regionally ranked team bodes well for us down the road"
The two women's runners to break into the all-time 6K list mentioned by Coach Norman were
Katherine Hopkins and
Peyton Skoglund. Hopkins now stands at 22nd all-time thanks to her finishing time of 23:15 while Skoglund is now 29th all time with a 23:51 finish. The pair are the first entries to the all-time 6K list since Caroline Hilliard's 22:53 finish at the NCAA Regionals in 2022.
The Catamounts will hit the trails again next weekend at the Brevard Invitational before taking on the Upstate Invite in October.
Keep track of everything related to Catamount cross country and WCU Athletics through its social media outlets on Facebook (fb.com/catamountsports) and Twitter (@catamounts, @catamountxctf).
