Oct. 31, 2008
LAS VEGAS - The UNLV women's cross country team will be competing in the 2008 Mountain West Conference Men's and Women's Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Mission Bay Park in San Diego, Calif.
The women's 6K race will begin at 10 a.m. (PT) will feature all nine league teams, including defending MWC champion Colorado State, No. 23 New Mexico and No. 28 BYU.
UNLV head coach Tony Houchin, who is in his third season with the program, will field a lineup that includes seniors Jenni Shearer and Isabelle Stoate, junior Bailey Kuestermeyer, sophomore Ashley Silva, and freshmen Erin Murphy, Amber Throop and Brett Zorich.
"I am excited for this weekend's championships," Houchin said. "The team's workouts have been going well and I expect us to have a great day on Saturday."
The Rebels are headlined this year by Shearer, who is turning in a strong final collegiate season and has posted three top-10 finishes this fall. Shearer's best performance was at the UC Riverside Invitational, where she placed eighth overall with a blistering 5K time of 17:24.8, which is the second-best performance in Rebel history. Overall that time was the third-fastest on the Rebel all-time board.
Shearer and the rest of her Rebel teammates are vying to continue to improve on last year's placing at the Mountain West Conference Championships, when they finished seventh overall. It was the program's highest placing since it came in sixth at the 2000 league meet.
