Cougars' track and field teams enjoyed a tremendous season

PROVO, Utah — Saying the 2009 outdoor track and field season at BYU was a success

is almost an understatement.

Mountain West Conference titles for both the men's and women's teams, strong

performances in both the men's (ninth place) and women's (sixth place) teams in

the West Regional meet, and solid efforts by the men (tied for 13th place) and

women (15th place) at the NCAA Division I Championships in Fayetteville, Ark. —

not to mention an individual men's national champion — all added up to a lot of

hardware for both BYU track teams this year.

All-American Kyle Perry ran away with the 2009 men's 3,000-meter steeplechase

national title with a personal-best, conference-best and BYU-record time of 8

minutes and 29.24 seconds in the final. On the women's side, freshman Lacey

Cramer followed up her 2009 women's indoor national title in the 800-meter run

with a fourth-place finish at outdoor nationals with a time of 2:03.18.

"Lacey Cramer did an outstanding job," women's coach Craig Poole said.

"Cecily Lemmon was just outstanding there too, she did wonderfully well."

While earning All-American honors, Lemmon, a sophomore, finished second at

nationals in the women's 10,000-meter run with a time of 33:39.97. just shy of

the 33:25.71 time of senior Danette Doetzel of Providence.

Men's coach Mark Robison said Perry and fellow All-American Richard Nelson

were forced to run a preliminary race at 12:40 a.m. due to severe thunderstorms

and tornados in the area, but still came away with personal-best performances.

While Perry grabbed top honors in the steeplechase final, Nelson cracked into

the top-10 with a time of 8:50.08.

"Everybody that went either had their best performance of their life, or they