Showing no mercy on the Big Sky competition, the NAU women’s cross country team won the conference title on Friday morning in Pocatello, Idaho, with a perfect score of 15, as senior Ali Upshaw easily won individual honors and senior Elise Stearns, shaking off a year’s worth of rust, placing second in her comeback race.
The Lumberjack women, which fell to third nationally after a third-place finish two weeks ago in the Pre-Nationals (albeit without Stearns and Karrie Baloga), reasserted themselves on a brisk day at the Riverside Golf Course. Upshaw led from the gun, covering the 5K course in 16:10, while Stearns hung back but picked it up in the final 2K to finish second in 16:27. Stearns entered as the two-time defending Big Sky titlist, but has been fighting injuries since last indoor track season.
What makes the performance by the NAU women even more impressive is that coach Mike Smith held out two top runners, Baloga and Maggi Congdon, and also didn’t run Nikita Moore, Alyson Churchill and Alex Carlson.
The men’s race was a little bit closer — but, really, never in doubt. David Mullarkey led a pack of five through 1K and then just kept putting on the pressure and pulled away early. He ran the last 4K of the 8K course basically by himself, and teammate Colin Sahlman finished strong to place second.
Mullarkey, the senior transfer from Florida State, has been NAU’s top runner all season and exerted his dominance early. He essentially led wire-to-wire, though there was a pack of five runners early, which then dwindled to three and then just Mullarkey pulling away.
Heading into the last kilometer, after making a sharp turn, Mullarkey looked back and saw — well, no one was there. Sahlman, however, ran well to edge Montana State senior Ben Perrin by less than a second. It was perhaps Sahlman’s best cross country race in his NAU career, though he did run well two weeks ago in the Pre-Nationals in Wisconsin, finishing 23rd overall and NAU’s second runner in that race.
Going in the men’s race, some observers thought that Montana State might give NAU a good run, but that didn’t materialize. The Lumberjacks let Mullarkey and Sahlman lead the way, and the next group included five NAU runners.
At the finish, there was a 19-second gap between NAU’s third runner, Santiago Prosser, and its fourth and fifth, redshirt freshman Ford Washburn and true freshman Manny Perez, who placed eighth and ninth overall.
Justin Keyes (10th), Zack Munson (12th) and Kang Nyoak (13th) also raced well, all placing higher than one scoring runner from third-place Weber State.
The NAU women also showed some impressive pack running, making the race seem like a workout. Seven of the top eight finishers were NAU runners, with only Montana State’s Kyla Christopher-Moody (7th) breaking up the party.
After Upshaw and Stearns, junior Anna Fenske was third, redshirt freshman Ava Mitchell fourth, senior Alexis Kebbe fifth and redshirt freshman Emma Stutzman sixth. Keira Moore was eighth and Hayley Burns ninth.
NAU’s next race will be the NCAA Mountain Regionals on Nov. 15 in Reno, when both the women’s and men’s teams will face rival BYU, which dominated both the Big 12 Conference women’s and men’s races on Friday.
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