Huskers Run Well at Chile Pepper Festival

Fayetteville, Ark. - Against some of the toughest competition in the nation, the Nebraska men's and women's cross country teams ran their best races of the year Saturday at the Chile Pepper Festival in Fayetteville, Ark.

Led by senior tri-captain Kayte Tranel, the Husker women placed fifth in the team standings with 220 points. The Huskers trailed only No. 16 Oklahoma State, No. 12 Arkansas, No. 14 Baylor and Wichita State, while defeating conference foes Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Kansas State. 

Tranel placed 17th overall in a career-best 6K time of 21:12, and was followed by freshman Ari Goldstein in 32nd place (21:40) and sophomore Channing Anseth in 44th (21:58), who was running in her first meet of the year.

Senior Kim Pancoast placed 59th in a time of 22:19, and freshman Natalja Zarcenko slipped to 93rd (22:56) after suffering an injury during the race.

"I was really pleased with our finish," Head Coach Jay Dirksen said. "Kayte ran the best I have ever seen her run, and Ari ran very good and moved up in the last half of the race. Those top three teams are very good teams, and if we would have ran our very best, we might have been able to get into the top three or four."

Sophomore Joslyn Dalton (107th, 23:10), senior tri-captain Michaela Lenihan (117th, 23:15), sophomore Betsy Miller (120th, 23:17) and freshman Jennifer Pancoast (125th, 23:19) all placed in the top half of the field of nearly 300 runners.

On the men's side, sophomore Peter van der Westhuizen ran one of the best 10K races in recent Nebraska history with a time of 30:00 to finish 28th overall. His effort led the men's team to a 16th-place finish out of 35 teams with 449 points and edged Big 12 opponents Kansas State and Baylor.

Junior co-captain Bryce Dickmeyer nearly cracked the top 100 with his 103rd-place finish in a career-best time of 32:06, while another Fremont native, freshman Brian Parr was 108th (32:09).

Parr, along with freshman Kyle Custer and Chris Clymer, were running the 10K distance for the first time in their careers after running 5K in high school and 8K in previous meets this season. Custer finished 152nd (32:57) and Clymer was 165th (33:20), while junior co-captain Aaron Nasers finished 137th in 32:40.

"This is the best the men have run all season," Dirksen said. "Peter (van der Westhuizen) was awesome, and it was real encouraging to see the three freshmen run that well competition-wise and time-wise in their first 10K race. I thought we made significant improvement this week and we can take a lot of positives out of this meet."

Nebraska will now take a week off before traveling to the Big 12 Championship on Oct. 28. The University of Baylor is the host of this year's conference meet, which will take place at the Cottonwood Creek Golf Course in Waco, Texas starting at 10 a.m. with the men's 8K, followed by the women's 6K at 11 a.m.