Lopes ladies best Arizona State, Arizona in showdown

Friday, September 29

Tucson, Ariz.

Grand Canyon

Dave Murray Invitational

Photo by: Nathan Peters

9/29/2023 4:30:00 PM | Cross Country

Men plagued by mid-race injuries

By: Nathan Peters

TUCSON, Ariz. — The Grand Canyon cross country team concluded the third meet of the season Friday, officially running past the halfway mark on the regular season.

The highlight of the day came from the women's squad where they beat out both Arizona State and Arizona to take third in the team competition.

"Really proud of our women today," head coach Paul Limpf said. "I told them to go out and compete and they did just that."

Junior Abby Scherer continued her stretch of strong performances by placing ninth (21 minutes 10.3 seconds) out of 74. Behind Scherer, a herd of Lopes including Kaitlyn Kaye, Hana Hall, Halle Jenkins, Niki Hemmerlin, and Becca Taylor all finished in the top 30.

"The team packed up really well and continued to move up the whole race and that allowed us to pick off a few teams at the end of the race," Limpf said. "I'm really proud of how they worked together and believe that will make a huge difference in our upcoming meets."

The men had strong individual performances but struggled as a team due to some mid race injuries. Cannon Angotti placed 11th of 61 with a time of 24:27.6. Sophomore Alex Rafferty was the second best finisher for the Lopes.

The Lopes lost three of the runners halfway through the race which effected the pack towards the front.

"We had a few unfortunate things go our way today on the course," Limpf said. "We will regroup and learn from this as we prepare for our next meet at Santa Clara."

The Lopes next meet will take place at Santa Clara on Oct. 14.

Live results of Friday's race in Tucson can be found here.