WACO – Led by the individual winner with Aggie junior Henry Lelei (La-lay), the Texas A&M men earned an automatic qualifying position for the NCAA Championships in cross country by placing second at the South Central region race.
Lelei covered the 10,000-meter course at the Cottonwood Creek golf club in 30 minutes, 9.4 seconds to win the race by nearly nine seconds over Arkansas’ Eric Fernandez (30:18.0), the SEC individual champion.
Texas, ranked No. 11 nationally, won the men’s team title with 40 points while Texas A&M, ranked No. 24 in the nation, tallied 56 points for second place. No. 15 Arkansas, the SEC team champion, placed third with 65 points and is in jeopardy of not making the NCAA Championship field as an at-large selection.
The Aggies and Longhorns will be two of 18 teams who automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships from the nine regions contested on Saturday. Another 13 at-large selections will be added to make a field of 31 teams at the national meet in Terre Haute, Indiana on November 21.
In the women’s team race it was No. 17 Arkansas winning with 49 points over No. 14 Texas, who had 69. The Aggie women, ranked sixth in the South Central region, claimed third place with 90 points over SMU (128) and Rice (129).
Natosha Rogers placed fifth over the women’s 6,000-meter race as she clocked 20:41.1 and earned an automatic qualification as an individual to the NCAA Championships.
Joining Rogers as individual women’s qualifier to the national meet are defending South Central champion Silje Fjortoft of SMU (1st, 19:59.1), Becky Wade of Rice (2nd, 20:25.6) and Agnes Kemboi of TCU (6th, 20:43.7).
Texas A&M men had six individuals earn all-region status by placing among the top 24 finishers. Following Lelei for the Aggies was MacLean O’Donnell in 10th place, who ran 30:57.5, and James Hodges in 11th, as he ran 31:00.9.
Kevin Burnett ran 31:08.5 to place 15th while Stephen Curry (31:36.1) and Isaac Spencer (31:39.6) finished 23rd and 24th. C.J. Brown placed 28th in 31:47.3 while Will Barry was an alternate for the team this weekend.
The Aggie women had four runners earn all-region. Katherine Devlin followed Rogers with a 12th place effort in a time of 21:10.9. Hillary Montgomery finished in 20th place with a 21:36.1 and Tara Upshaw finished 25th in 21:47.6. Rounding out the A&M team score was Haley Parsons in 28th with a 21:52.8.
Rounding out the women’s crew was Itzel Cetina, who placed 46th (22:28.4), and Shawn Dalglish, who finished 48th (22:32.4).