Cloud County Cross Country Competes at Gans Creek Classic
A second consecutive meet taking place outside of the Sunflower State found the Cloud County Community College women's and men's cross country teams in action on Friday morning as the T-Birds competed in the 2022 Gans Creek Classic held at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course and hosted by the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri on September 30th.
With sophomore Rylan Cheney serving as the lone representative for the CCCC men, the Cloud County women would compete as a team with seven runners completing the 6,000-meter course as part of a 12-team competition. As a team, the T-Birds would finish with 212 points and finish ninth while competing against primarily NCAA Division II and NAIA schools with Iowa Western also representing the NJCAA.
Led by sophomore Lucy Ndungu who would finish in 14th with a time of 23:04.30, CCCC would also get a top-25 finish from Melody Ochana who would run a time of 23:42.0 to finish as the top-two finisher for the T-Birds. Also contributing to Cloud County's five-person team score on Friday morning would be Abigail Fisher with a 55th-place finish (25:00.20), Nikola Prochazkova in 77th (25:54.70), and Emmy Punches who would finish in 85th with a time 26:32.50 in CCCC's first 6,000-meter competition of the year. Other T-Birds to compete in the race would include Bailey Rock who finished in 88th with a time of 26:41.90 along with Aina Goir who would post a 105th-place finish in a time of 28:28.50.
Starting the morning off with the men's 8,000-meter run would be Cheney competing as an individual while earning a 105th-place finish in a deep field that featured 14 total teams including third-ranked University of Saint Mary from the NAIA and three teams ranked in the top-10 of their respective divisions in the NAIA (Iowa Western, Cowley, and Allen County). Running a time of 28:05.80, Cheney has now competed in each of Cloud County's nine cross country competitions dating back to last season.
What's Next?
Cloud County's next competition date is slated for Friday, October 14th as the T-Birds are scheduled to compete in the 2022 Emporia State University Hornet Invitational. The meet will be a return to action inside the state of Kansas for CCCC for the first time since the season-opening Terry Masterson Twilight on September 1st, and the first time that the T-Birds will compete in the Hornet Invitational since the 2019 season when the CCCC men would earn a runner-up finish.