Cross Country Opens Season at George Kyte Classic

Saturday, September 6

Flagstaff, AZ

Grand Canyon

George Kyte Invitational

Tyler Vandyke

9/6/2014 5:44:00 PM | Cross Country, Women's Cross Country

The Grand Canyon University men's and women's cross country teams competed in the George Kyte Classic hosted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz., to launch their 2014 season. The event was held at Buffalo Park and was separated into two sets of results—one for NCAA Division I schools and another for open competitors from other schools such as Arizona Christian, Dixie State, and Western New Mexico. To round out the Division I slate, GCU competed with NAU, University of Arizona, and Arizona State.

For the women's squad, Kelsi Klotter led the Lopes at 14^th place with a time of 16:23.5 in the 2.6 mile run for the Division I segment. Freshman Mariah Montoya had a strong first meet, pacing not far behind Klotter to finish 16^th (16:32.2). Rounding out the top-20 were Paige Momerak (16:43.6), Kendra Altman (16:45.8), and Lacey Peterson (16:46.2) to place 18^th through 20^th, respectively.

"The course was changed so it was a little bit shorter this season, but our top six girls all finished with a faster average pace than our top finisher last year and they all worked really well together," said head coach Michael Hoffmann. "It was nice to see them mixing it up with the other Division I schools and being able to compete with some of their athletes."

Tyler Vandyke placed 11^th with a time of 23:32.4 to lead the men's team and Brandon Kocmoud finished 13^th with a time of 23:49.4 in the Division I race. Also posting a top-20 finish was Matthew Jackson at 19^th (24:34.5).

"A couple of the guys started a little too fast and weren't quite able to keep that pace, but it was good to see them pushing to compete," said Hoffmann. "NAU was the national runner-up last season. Both Tyler and Brandon were able to step it up and keep pace with some of their athletes. Looking at our team's times, if the race had been the full 8k, I think many of our runners would have broken their personal records."

Grand Canyon will have their next meet on Sept. 20 at the Mustang Challenge, hosted by The Master's College in Santa Clarita, Calif. Fans can check www.gculopes.com for complete results.

"It was good to get an idea of where our runners are at right now and for each of them to discover what they need to work on before our meet in two weeks," said Hoffmann. "I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform because it won't be at such a high altitude and we can get an even better idea of what we need to work on before the Western Athletic Conference Championship."

Click here for complete results.