California Baptist University
WAC Championships
CBU Cross Country Favored to Repeat at WAC Championships
10/25/2023 12:00:00 PM | Cross Country & Track
ARLINGTON--- The California Baptist University cross-country team is the favorite to repeat at the 2023 Western Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships for both the men's and women's teams.
The Lancers swept last year's WAC Championships in Seattle, Washington, and collected 13 All-WAC finishers, including one individual champion on the men's side.
The men and women enter into the race with their highest national and regional rankings in program history, with the men ranking fifth nationally and the women 12th. The rankings come as a result of solid performances at the Roy Griak Invitational and Nuttycombe Invitational. At Griak, both teams walked away with first-place finishes, and the women walked away with the top finisher in Greta Karinauskaite. The men had four top 10 finishers in the race, and the women had three to round out the sweep for CBU.
At the Nuttycombe Invitational, the Lancers competed against 55 of the 60 nationally-ranked programs and held their own. The men registered a fourth-place finish, while the women took eighth. Arturs Medveds was the first Lancers across the finish line, placing 23rd at 23:53.8 to give CBU 23 points to jumpstart their result. The men's finish at Nuttycombe put CBU ahead of Stanford, Butler, Texas Air Force, Notre Dame, Villanova, Syracuse, and Wisconsin, all of which checked in higher than the Lancers in the previous national poll.
The women came in eighth behind strong performances from Grace McLaughlin, Yasna Petrova, and Karinauskaite. McLaughlin crossed the line in 29th at 20:32.3, with Petrova and Karinauskaite coming in 35th and 52nd, respectively.
The Championships are set for Friday, October 27, with the men's race kicking off the day at 8 AM and the women starting at 8:45 AM.
Players Mentioned
