ASU cross country got its season started the right way at the George Kyte Invitational Saturday afternoon in Flagstaff taking home multiple victories in team and individual categories.
While the men, who were up against the No. 3 Northern Arizona Lumberjacks, didn’t pull out the team win, redshirt senior C.J. Albertson picked up a first place individual finish to kick start his final season as a Sun Devil.
With all said and done, head coach Louie Quintana was pleased with his team’s effort.
“C.J. got the win, and that’s great,” he said. “Measuring up against NAU, up in Flagstaff it’s sort of a training Mecca. The fact that C.J. can be a legitimate low finisher for us is going to be a big thing for us as we go forward.”
Aside from Albertson, several underclassmen got a chance to perform in the season-opening race. Brandon Boys, a redshirt sophomore who only ran one year in high school, also put up a strong performance. He helped lead ASU’s second-place finish, up against in-state Division I foes NAU, Arizona, and Grand Canyon.
“He’s now at a point where we’re going to be counting on him to be in our top seven this fall,” Quintana said. “He ran tremendously today.”
As for the women’s team, which didn’t face any ranked opponents, five top ten finishes allowed the Sun Devil women to take first place as a team. Redshirt junior Chelsey Albertson led the way with a second place overall finish.
“It was huge,” Quintana said. “For us to go in and have our number two, three, four, and five finishers were all freshmen, and to do that against Arizona and NAU is a really big testament to their hard work that they put in over the summer.”
Of the ten first year women running for ASU, true freshmen Courtney Lewis and Megan Reniewicki took fourth and fifth respectively, kicking off their careers at ASU with fantastic showings.
“They executed the race plan perfectly today, and that’s huge,” Quintana said. “A lot of times, freshmen will go out and violate their assignment and run too hard…today they followed the race plan to a tee, and executed it perfectly.”
ASU will continue its season on Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Dave Murray Invitational in Tucson.
Reach the reporter at jeff.griffith21@asu.edu or follow @Jeff_Griffith21 on Twitter.
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