The Idaho women’s cross country team battled rainy conditions Saturday in Seattle to win an unprecedented fourth-straight WAC Championship while the men’s team finished second.
Idaho senior Hannah Kiser was the individual WAC Champion for the second-consecutive season on the women’s side earning WAC Cross Country Athlete of the Year for the second year in a row. Freshman Nicholas Boersma claimed the individual crown on the men’s side as the Vandals went 1, 2, 3 with junior Cody Helbling finishing second and sophomore Santos Vargas finishing third. Helbling also claims the WAC Cross Country Athlete of the Year on the men’s side while Boersma is the WAC Freshman of the Year. To top off the impressive championship weekend, Idaho coach Wayne Phipps was named the WAC Women’s Coach of the Year for the sixth time.
“It was obviously pretty strange weather,” Kiser said following the race. “We all came out with a positive attitude. The atmosphere at WAC is just so great. We knew that we had a really strong team so we came in with a lot of confidence and we ran with that confidence.”
Kiser’s first place-finish in 17 minutes, 25.70 seconds on the women’s 5-kilometer course was more than 20 seconds faster than the second-place finisher, Missouri-Kansas City’s Courtney Frerichs. Senior Holly Stanton Browning finished third overall and second for the Vandals in 18:04.70.
Idaho’s next three runners all finished in the top 10 to make five out of the first 10 finishers all Idaho runners. Sophomore Halie Raudenbush (fifth), senior Emily Paradis (sixth) and sophomore Abby Larson (10th) rounded out the Idaho scoring. The Vandals finished with 25 points on the day, 23 points ahead of second-place finisher Seattle U’s 48. Stanton Browning and Paradis have been participants in each of Idaho’s four-consecutive championships.
“Of course it is exciting for us to win that fourth championship,” Phipps said. “When we look back to three years ago when we won our first one, it was a little unexpected at the time. After that we joked around a bit about winning the first one and that we were going to try to win four. After winning the second one it became a bit more of a reality. Those girls have worked so hard the last few years to make this happen.”
On the men’s side, the team had it’s best WAC race since 2007 despite fielding a mostly freshman squad. Boersma won Idaho’s first individual title since Vic Dyrgall won the Pacific Coast Conference title in 1941. He finished the men’s 8-kilometer course in 25:26.70.
“That was a crazy race,” Boersma said. “This win is for all of us to be honest. It was a great day for us and everyone ran well. To come out with the win was a great way to top it off.”
Despite Idaho having the first three finishers in the race, Utah Valley had more depth edging out the Vandals 38 points to 43 for first place. Idaho scored points from Nathan Stark (15th), Mickey Day (22nd) and Morgan Choate (26th) to round out scoring.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the guys.” Phipps commented. “We did not quite pull off the victory but we were very close. Those guys ran very aggressively and to go 1-2-3 it was quite the accomplishment by those guys.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]