Women's Cross Country Earns Sixth-Place Finish against Largely Division-I Field at UC Riverside

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's cross country team had a strong showing at the UC Riverside Invitational, coming in sixth place out of 19 teams, including many Division I programs.

The Athenas finished with 220 points, and were beaten out only by scholarship programs Cal Baptist, Southern Utah, Cal Poly Pomona, Utah Valley and UC Santa Barbara. The four teams behind CMS in the top 10 were all Division I programs, as the Athenas edged out UC Irvine, Long Beach State, UC Riverside and Sacramento State, while San Diego State (11th), Pepperdine (14th) and Hawaii (15th) were in the top 15. 

Sophomore Riley Harmon, running her first race of the 2019 campaign after sitting out last week at the Biola Invitational, was the top finisher for CMS in 36th place (out of 164 runners), crossing the line in 21:37.07. Harmon's presence made the top of the CMS lineup even stronger after it began the year with an impressive third-place showing at Biola. 

Junior Dulcie Jones (21:54.47), who was the top finisher last week at Biola, and sophomore Sophie Gitlin (21:56.14) finished in 50th and 52nd place, respectively, to come in second and third on the team. Junior Abigail Johnson was close behind in 55th place in 21:58.33.

Junior Olivia Gleason was the fifth Athena to score, coming in 62nd place in 22:15.99. CMS also had three others place in the top 100, as sophomore Emily Clarke crossed in 22:31.42 (79th), sophomore Brooklyn Button finished in 22:37.76 and senior Georgia Scherer earned an 88th place finish in 22:41.31. 

CMS will be back in action next week when it travels to CSU San Bernardino for the Coyote Challenge.