Stags Win SCIAC Championships, Athenas Finish Third

The CMS men's cross country team won the SCIAC Championship meet for the second straight year and claimed their first SCIAC title since 2002. The women's team finished a disappointing third after narrowly getting second at the SCIAC Multi-Duals. The Athenas finish tied for second in the final standings.

Jennifer Tavé (SO, St. Germain, France) led the Athenas as she has all season finishing second overall and well clear of third place.  Her time of 22:53 was the sixth fastest ever run on the course.  Her finish also earned her First Team All-SCIAC honors for finishing in the top 10.  Earning Second Team All-SCIAC honors for finishing 11th - 20th were Julia Rigby (SO, Tustin) in 11th and Ashley Scott (JR, Battle Creek, MI) in 18th.  Rigby earned First Team honors last season while Scott also earned Second Team honors in 2007 and 2008.  Just missing out on Second Team honors were Aubrey Zimmerling (FR, Lakewood, CO) in 21st and Kate Crawford (FR, Seattle, WA) in 22nd.

The Stags battled a Pomona-Pitzer team that was trying to shrug off their poor dual meet performance and upset CMS to win the SCIAC title.  In what amounted to a virtual dual-meet, all five scorers for the Stags beat their corresponding scorer on the Sagehens and won 33-39.  The win combined with their 7-0 dual meet record earned the team the overall SCIAC title for the tenth time in school history.  Of the top 16 finishers in the race, CMS has eight, Pomona-Pitzer six and two schools had one each.

Kramer Straube (JR, Menlo Park) led the Stags for the third straight race.  He finished second overall with a time of 25:43.  Brian Kopczynski (JR, Coto de Caza) finished fourth, Kris Brown (JR, Seattle, WA) finished seventh and Brian Sutter (FR, Monroe, WA) finished ninth.  All four earned First Team All-SCIAC honors.  Straube was First Team in 2008and Kopczynski was in 2007.  Brown earned Second Team honors in 2007 while Sutter earned All-SCIAC honors for first time.  Second Team All-SCIAC members included Florian Scheulen (SR, Encinitas) in 11th, Matt Kurtis (SR, Bellingham, WA) in 13th, Georgi Dinolov (JR, Santa Cruz) in 14th and Dillon Ayers (JR, Eureka) in 16th.

CMS next races at the NCAA West Regional on Saturday, November 14.  The race is being hosted by Pomona-Pitzer and is being run on a campus course in their Wash.  The women race at 9:00 with the men following at 9:45.  The regional is the qualifying meet for the NCAA Championships which are held the following Saturday.