Karis Jochen ran to a fourth-place finish to earn a spot at the NCAA Championship while the men’s team was one spot away from moving on.
Texas A&M hosted the South Central Regional last Friday at the Dale Watts Cross Country Course where the top two teams and top four individuals not on advancing teams earn a berth at the NCAA Championships race.
Texas A&M’s men’s team placed third and was led by a pair of runners, Austin Wells and Cameron Villarreal, capturing 11th and 12th. The women’s squad placed 7th and was led by Karis Jochen, who covered the 6,000-meter course a time of 19 minutes and 56.7 seconds, to move on to the national meet. Athletes will travel to Louisville, Kentucky next week on Nov. 21 to run at the NCAA Championship race.
In the men’s race, the Aggies took third by 16 points, which was one spot away from automatically qualifying for the national meet. The juniors Wells and Villarreal led the squad in the 10,000-meter race recording 30:24.3 and 30:28.2, respectively.
Arkansas won the South Central regional for the third straight year while Texas was the runner up, as both teams advance to the NCAA Championship meet. The Razorback men won with 51 points over the Longhorns with 69 points, the Aggies with 85 points and Lamar 95 points.
Brian Barraza from Houston was closely watched as he garnered the individual title in a winning time of 30:07.4 with Iliass Aouani from Lamar placing second in 30:09.9. Next, a pair of Razorbacks, Gabe Gonzales and Frankline Tonui, finished third and fourth as Jacob Pickle from Texas placed fifth.
The Razorbacks also won the team title for the women’s race totaling an impressive 40 points defending their fifth consecutive South Central title. Texas was also the runner up for the women’s race with 105 runner-up, followed by SMU with 132 points and Baylor 134 points.
Arkansas’s Dominique Scott won the individual title in 19:35.3 ahead of Baylor’s Maggie Montoya running 19:50.5 and Rice’s Cali Roper clocking 19:53.9. Jochen fifth placed fifth as she beat Arkansas’s Kaitlin Flattmann and Lamar’s Verity Ockenden, who was the last automatic qualifying individual for NCAA Championship.
The sophomore from Texas A&M, Christian Farris, was running on all four cylinders as he placed 14th in 30:31.7. He was followed by Alex Riba clocking 30:56.9 to place 24th. The top four runners for the Aggies were top 25, earning All-Region team.
Colin Stoebe placed 30th for the Aggies in 31:17.3 and Ryan Teel finished 33rd in 31:24.2. The sophomore, Juan Uribe, was unable to finish the race.
The women’s crew for the Aggies had Kelsey Persyn placing 38th to complete the course in 21:05.3. She was followed by another pair of Aggies, Katie Watson and Haley Deakins, who took 49th and 50th with times of 21:23.2 and 21:29.1. Kaitlin Tanner finished fifth for the Aggies in 66th while recording 21:43.1. Katie Pia and Emily Willingham, the sixth and seventh runners for A&M, placed 67th in 21:45.1 and 74th in 22:00.8.
