Women Dominate CC Invitational

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs women's cross country team scored the minimum points possible in dominating the Colorado College Invitational on Saturday at Monument Valley Park.

Shannon Payne, Sarah Shepard, Megan Lund, Ashley Birger and Addie Devine scored in places one through five respectively to give the Mountain Lions 15 points, the fewest possible under the top-5 finisher format used for the meet.

Payne covered the 6-kilometer course in 22 minutes, 21.70 seconds to easily take first. Shepard was second, 44.6 seconds behind. Kellyn Johnson of Cloud Community College took third individually, but did not count towards the team scores since her school entered only three runners.

UCCS coach Graeme Badger wanted his team to run a paced, disciplined race. He had runners of comparable abilities run together as a pack.

"We're competing four weekends in a row," said Badger. "The schedule we have is really fatiguing so I wanted us to stay under control today to save some energy for next week at Boulder. That's a really high quality meet."

While Payne couldn't resist separating from the pack, the next four UCCS finishers were within 46 seconds of each other. The next three, Kristen Andersen, Lisa Short and Leslie Bennett, stayed with 36 seconds of each other.

Host Colorado College finished second with 51 points, led by seventh-place finisher Jeanine Stewart. Division I Northern Colorado took third, while UCCS' Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rivals Mesa State, Metro State and Regis took fourth, fifth and sixth respectively.