KIRKSVILLE, Mo. – Freshman
Claire McCune became the first Drury women's cross country runner in program history to win the Great Lakes Valley Conference championship as the Springfield native from New Covenant Academy claimed the title with a time of 21:55.42 in the six-kilometer race on Saturday in Kirksville, Missouri.
McCune won the championship by six seconds over senior Erin Crone from Bellarmine.
Following the race, McCune was also awarded the GLVC Women's Cross Country Runner of the Year, GLVC Freshman of the Year for women's cross country and was named to the all-conference team.
"We told Claire going in that if she made a good push in the middle, and it was an honest race that she'd have a chance to win," said Drury head coach
Jamie Moreno. "She led wire-to-wire, made that push in the middle and won.
"She's been battling some lower leg pain for several weeks so she's been working out in the pool and only ran a couple of times this week. For a freshman to handle the pressure and what she went through leading up to the race is really impressive."
Drury's team finished in sixth place overall. Southern Indiana won the team championship with Bellarmine coming in second and Missouri S&T finished third. The Panthers sixth place finish was one spot better than last year and six places better than their 2015 finish.
Behind McCune, Drury's next best finisher was Hillary Carr. The senior from Springfield-Kickapoo came in 29
th with a time of 23:41.55.
Johnna McGlaughlin was 33
rd (23:46.34),
Taylor Weiss was 64
th (24:41.23),
Rachel Bareford was 65
th (24:43.87),
Abby Judd finished 69
th (24:51.68),
Cassandra Brown came in 80
th (25:08.40) and Ryleigh Glynn was 121
st (26:40.68).
"As a team, we ran a lot better than we have all year," said Moreno. "Every person on the team ran their best time of the year today. I'm really proud of Hillary Carr. For someone that hasn't run competitively for seven years, to come out and finish 29th in the league is really impressive."
Drury competes again in the NCAA-II Midwest Regional meet on Nov. 4 in Cedarville, Ohio.
Complete Results
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