Athenas Dominate Field at Pomona-Pitzer Invite
CLAREMONT, Calif. – The No. 7 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's cross country team cruised to a victory in the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational with six of the top 12 finishers and a total of 33 team points. For the fifth time this season, Bryn McKillop (SC) took the top spot in a race. On Saturday morning, McKillop finished the 6K race in a time of 21:24.99 to finish more than 16 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
The Athenas dominated the field on Saturday morning. As mentioned, CMS scored 33 team points to win the race by 66 points over the second-place team. The Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens finished in second-place with a team-score of 99. While all five of CMS' scoring runners finished in the top-10, the fifth best runner for Pomona-Pitzer finished in 40th, which gave the Athenas the comfortable victory.
McKillop continued her dominate senior season with another huge victory on Saturday morning. In her six races this year McKillop has won five, including each of her last three. McKillop was again in a league of her own on Saturday. She finished in a time of 21:24.99, 16 seconds faster than the second-place finisher, 37 seconds faster than the third-place finisher, and 48 seconds faster than the fourth-place finisher. Only five runners in the 159-runner field were within a minute of McKillop's winning time.
Joining McKillop in the top-10 were Malea Martin (CMC), Abigale Johnson (SC), and Roselyn Cantu (CMC), who finished in seventh, eighth, and 10th respectively. Martin finished the race in 22:37.90 to start a stretch of five CMS finishers in a spread of just over 14 seconds. Johnson crossed the line in 22:38.36, her fourth top-10 finish of the fall. Cantu followed in 10th place with a time of 22:39.04. Immediately behind Cantu was Ellen Berkley (CMC) and Dulcie Jones (SC) in times of 22:41.40 and 22:51.99 respectively.
In total, CMS had 18 runners finish in the top 50.
The Athenas will take off next week to prepare for the SCIAC Championships on Oct. 28th in Chino, Calif.