Baylor closed its regular season Friday morning at the Arturo Barrios Invitational in College Station, Texas, where the Bears battled windy conditions and huge fields at the Watts Cross Country Course. The women finished 28th and the men 29th as both teams turned their attention toward the Big 12 Championship.
The Baylor men got a season-best effort from their top five, with junior Jack Sterrett leading the way in 106th place overall after clocking 24:30.2 in the 8K. Seniors Nolan Keenan (25:02.7), Straton Miller (25:27.1) and Aiden Ramshaw (25:56.8), along with freshman Matthew King (25:28.4), rounded out the scoring group.
"It's not where we ultimately want to be," Baylor coach David Barnett said, "but collectively, from 1 to 5, we had a pretty close group. The goal is to keep closing those gaps heading into (the Big 12 Championship)."
On the women’s side, Baylor was without its No. 1 runner, Ruth Kimeli, and Eastern Kentucky transfer Khadija Ennasri stepped into the lead role. She finished 48th out of 389 runners with a 6K time of 20:27.6. Her former team showed well too, putting three runners in the top seven individually and taking second in the team standings behind nationally ranked Arkansas.
Sophomores Rickeisha Simms and Eva Jacobsen followed Ennasri for Baylor, both finishing under 22 minutes. Senior Mackenize Browne and junior Ella Perry also counted in the Bears’ team score.
"The top three women ran really well," Barnett said. "The other ones just got out a little slower than we'd like, and they got stuck behind a lot of bodies.
Hopefully, in the future, we can continue to put ourselves up there a little more. But I loved how the top six raced.
Overall, we got some things done. It's never a perfect race, but I think the ones who ran well were bright spots for us."
Baylor now gets next week to recover before returning to action at the Big 12 Championship on Oct. 31 at the Greiner Family OSU Cross Country Course in Stillwater, Okla. Barnett said the staff will ease off some of the work, but the Bears still have business to handle before conference day arrives.
"We will back off a little on some of the workouts, but we still have a lot to do between now and then," Barnett said. "Hopefully, they'll feel a little fresher and find a way to build some confidence and build some momemtum in the two weeks leading up to conference."
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Baylor Faces A TCU Showdown With Real Pressure On Aranda
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Dave Aranda knows the stakes are not limited to bragging rights, either. A win would give Baylor an early boost in the conference race and reinforce the feeling that this team is moving in the right direction, while another loss would only add to the pressure building around a program that has not been able to get enough done in this series. It sets up as the sort of low-scoring game where every possession could feel bigger than usual, and for Baylor, the larger question hangs over everything. [Read more 🡒]