Lobos run to MWC XC crowns

OREM — New Mexico crashed BYU's party at the MWC cross country championships.

Especially because it was hosting the meet Saturday morning at the Cascade Golf Center, BYU hoped to shine and show the rest of the conference what it could do.

Well, one school did shine far brighter than the rest, but unfortunately for the Cougars, it wasn't them.

Instead, both of New Mexico's teams ran extremely well to sweep the team titles.

New Mexico's men's team got an individual win from senior Jacob Kirwa and had its other four scorers all finish in the top 10 to edge BYU, 29 places to 34. On the women's side, New Mexico impressively went 2-3-4-7-8 to post a commanding victory over second-place BYU, 24-45.

The Utah women's team finished sixth.

The day's lone bright spot for BYU was junior Cecily Lemmon-Lew, who pulled away with just under 2K remaining and was very strong to the finish line to win individually on the women's side.

All in all, however, there was no question about which school had the best day.

"New Mexico ran lights out today," said BYU women's coach Patrick Shane. "It could be the best cross country race I've seen them run in two years, and they were good last year. And they're better this year. They had some people step up and run great today.

"We're just disappointed we weren't able to do the same." We didn't give them much of a contest. They really ran away with the team race and they did a great job."

It was the same story on the men's side. Kirwa outsprinted BYU sophomore Miles Batty over the final few hundred yards to win individually for New Mexico, 23:34.5-23:35.6. And Kirwa's teammates were stellar behind him to edge the Cougars to the team title.

"I think it was a good day for us," said Kirwa. "It was a good championship for us."

Kirwa battled until the end to beat Batty, but Lemmon-Lew had no such problems on the women's side.

Lemmon-Lew tried to hit Ruth Senior and Nicky Archer of New Mexico hard from the start, and when Shane instructed Lemmon-Lew to go by herself with less then 2K remaining, neither of them had an answer.

Lemmon-Lew quickly broke away and was strong all the way to the finish line.

"She really was in charge and she could've won it a lot of different ways," said Shane. "We chose to have her run with the top New Mexico girls, and at one point, I felt like we couldn't get them to go any faster. We wanted to take them out hard, and they wouldn't do it.

"So I told her to go, and she just opened a big lead right there and won it."

Lemmon-Lew had mixed emotions afterward.

On one hand, she was thrilled to claim the individual win. On the other hand, she was disappointed her team wasn't able to win the championship.