Cross Country

https://wccsports.com/news/2021/2/24/byu-sweeps-wcc-cross-country-championships.aspx



Sweep WCC. Nationals March 15.

https://www.vanquishthefoe.com/2021/3/15/22332086/byu-womens-cross-country-wins-national-championship



The women won it. The men took 7th place. Conner Mantz took 1st place.

https://www.vanquishthefoe.com/2021/3/15/22332183/byus-conner-mantz-wins-ncaa-mens-xc-individual-title

The men's race was fascinating. It looked like Mantz was told right around the 8k mark that the rest of the team was not having a good day and that he could just go for the win. Which he did. He pulled away significantly in the last mile to win by an extremely impressive 22 seconds.

SpiffCoug wrote:

The men's race was fascinating. It looked like Mantz was told right around the 8k mark that the rest of the team was not having a good day and that he could just go for the win. Which he did. He pulled away significantly in the last mile to win by an extremely impressive 22 seconds.

Just curious, why would he not try to win the race anyway? Would he try to stay with the team to help them keep their pace up? I don't know anything about cross country and how the team and individual play together.

Go all out and you fall apart then your finish will suffer hurting the team. In this case he had nothing to lose so we went for it and won.

byufan4ever wrote:

The men's race was fascinating. It looked like Mantz was told right around the 8k mark that the rest of the team was not having a good day and that he could just go for the win. Which he did. He pulled away significantly in the last mile to win by an extremely impressive 22 seconds.

Just curious, why would he not try to win the race anyway? Would he try to stay with the team to help them keep their pace up? I don't know anything about cross country and how the team and individual play together.

Yeah, he may have just been biding his time. But the team lost too many guys had bad days.



Northern Arizona won because they had a pack of 4 runners in the top 10. You get one point for each place the top 5 runners on a team finish. Lowest score wins.



BYU had one runner who was in the top 25 the first half of the race, but finished in like the 70s. He fell off the pace significantly. And then another runner was never in the top 100.

Won the first Big12 championship last weekend. Men took 2nd place.