Cross Country Sweeps Pac-12 Title

The Buffs are Pac-12 champions.

Both CU men’s and women’s cross country teams won conference championships on Saturday at the Wigwam Golf Course in Litchfield Park, Ariz.

The men runners, ranked sixth in the country, scored 46 points to beat Stanford. The 16th ranked women’s team put up 50 points to outpace No. 2 Washington.

Richard Medina led the men’s team with a time of 22:54 to finish third overall. Fellow senior Andy Wacker finished sixth a

Andy Wacker, a fifth year senior studying ecology and evolutionary biology, leads the pack during the fourth mile of the CU Alumini/Open/Time Trial cross county event on Sept. 3 at the CU Buffalo Ranch course. Both the men's and women's teams won Pac-12 championships. (Robert R. Denton/CU Independent)

few seconds later with a time of 23:24. For the women, Shalaya Kipp and Emma Coburn crossed the finish line at fourth and fifth place.

“I would give each team an ‘A’ for today’s performance,” said head coach Mark Wetmore. “They came out and raced what they were capable of and some even exceeded expectations.”

Wetmore’s team won it’s first championship in the newly formed conference, marking the Buffs as a force to be dealt with in the Pac-12′s future.

“It means a lot to win the first Pac-12 championship,” Wacker said. “In a conference that has the history that this one does (being the old Pac-10) and that has such great competitors with so many nationally ranked teams, it means an incredible amount to show them what we have and what we bring to the table.”

The last time the Buffs won a conference title was in 2007, when Medina was a freshman, as a member of the Big 12 Conference.

“Everything was so new then and I didn’t realize how special it was to win a conference title,” Medina said. “So to not have it for three years and then come back and win my senior year was pretty amazing.”

The championships mark CU’s first ever titles in the Pac-12. Next the teams will run at the NCAA Mountain Region Championships Nov. 12.

Contact CU Independent Sports Editor Michael Kurmholtz at [email protected].