Sept. 9, 2000

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - The Samford University men's and women's cross country teams each placed three runners in the top ten and both teams finished second behind host UT-Chattanooga in Friday's season opening meet at the UTC Invitational.

On the strength of 4-6-8 finish, Samford's men's team posted 43 points to distance themselves from South Alabama (81), Troy State (93), Jacksonville State (132) and Columbus State (132). Chattanooga won with 30 points. Andrew Spear finished fourth out of 38 runners in the five kilometer race with a time of 15:51, followed by Chad Johnson (6th, 15:59) and Brett Baddorf (8th, 16:06).

Samford's women finished second to UTC's 26 points with a total of 40 but well beyond South Alabama (66), Troy State (114) and Columbus State (138). Erin Giera led the women in the two-mile race by finishing sixth out of 43 participants (12:03), followed by Lauren Floyd (7th, 12:06) and Katie Flewellyn (8th, 12:09).

"I'm very pleased with the way we've opened our season," said head coach Glen McWaters. "We treat this tournament as a warm-up for the remainder of the season because we have some runners who are much better at longer distances. We did not back off of them this week in practice, so there were some tired legs, but I'm very encouraged because we had some surprising performances from some of our younger runners.

"Our goal was for them to pace themselves and run together and encourage each other, and they did that. We placed better than teams in our conference, and ran well against Chattanooga, which is usually one of the top four or five teams in the South."

Next up for Samford is the 8K men's race and the 5K women's race in the University of Alabama Crimson Classic in Tuscaloosa on Sat., Sept. 16.