LAKELAND, Fla.—The Southeastern University women's cross country ran away victorious in their first meet of the season at the Holloway Park Preseason XC Festival.
The Fire had three of the first four and seven of the first ten finishers across the line, totaling 20 points to earn the victory.
Commenting on Southeastern's results, coach Paul Kurtz said, "Our goal was to come in here and win and we accomplished our goal by far." He later applauded the team's group effort, "Julia (Rohm) and Makenzie (Johnson) both really had great races and the girl's behind them really stayed on strong with them and pushed themselves to keep the pack tight for most of the race."
The combined time for the 5K of the top seven Fire runners was 1:41:46, just over seven minutes faster than second place Pasco-Hernando State.
Sophomore Rohm topped all runners with a time of 19:48. "I am really happy. It was faster than my first race here last year, and I've been kind of injured in the beginning of this season and I'm still working through that so it was just really nice to get a good race in," stated Rohm.
Just behind her in second place overall came sophomore Johnson with a time of 20:04. Freshman Madeline Scherer finished fourth overall at 20:29.
Placing sixth and seventh overall were junior's Kelsi Ogilvie and Macy Peterson with times of 20:40 and 20:43, respectively.
Rounding out the top ten finishing eighth and tenth overall were freshmen Emma Woltjer and Liliana Baker at 20:46 and 21:19.
The Fire race again on Saturday September 14th at the University of Florida Mountain Dew Invitational.
