Posted: Sep 19, 2011

Eight personal bests for cross country at U.C. Riverside Invite

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Running in the second race of the season, eight Chapman University cross country runners set personal bests at the U.C. Riverside Cross Country Invitational on Saturday.

The women's team had four of the eight personal best times over the weekend led by freshman Lisa Peterkin who finished 113^th with a time of 19:56.4 in the 5k course. Suzanne Cornwell from Cal State San Marcos led the way with a time of 17:11. Three other Cal State San Marcos runners finished in the top-10 which gave the Cougars the overall win.

Sophomore Kelly Kneis (21:38.9), sophomore Paulette Garcia (22:18.2) and freshman Nicole Jourdain (23:07.7) also ran personal bests for the Panthers.

For the second week in a row in the 8k, freshman Spencer Berry paced the men's team finishing with a personal best of 26:42.5 which topped his time from last week by nearly 45 seconds and is the fastest time run by a men's runner since 2006. Southern Utah's Cam Levins won the race with a time of 22:58.7 while Berry was Chapman's top finisher in117th. Southern Utah won the team event for the men.

Also setting personal records for Chapman's men's team were junior Angel Flores (28:24.5), junior Zac Campbell (28:37) and freshman Alex Fichera (33:51.2). Fichera improved nearly three minutes over his previous week's time while Flores improved his time by almost a minute.

by Chris Watts
Sports Information Assistant