Cowboys Win Big 12 Title

Saturday, October 30

Stillwater, Okla.

10:00 AM

Oklahoma State University

Big 12 Championships

Girma Mecheso won the 2010 Big 12 individual title, leading the Cowboys to the team championship.

October 30, 2010 | Cowboy Cross Country & Track

Complete Reaults

Stillwater, Okla. - Oklahoma State's Cowboy cross country team took the top-four individual spots and won both the team and individual titles at the Big 12 Championships here Saturday morning, the third-consecutive year that the Cowboys have swept the team and individual honors. OSU's 19 points are the second-lowest total in the Big 12's 15-year history.

"Unbelievable," exclaimed OSU head coach Dave Smith. "In a conference that is this loaded and is this good with Oklahoma and Iowa State and Colorado and Texas. To do what they did with that group was pretty impressive. I think the guys ran very controlled, with a relaxed effort and then over the last 2K they worked pretty hard to separate themselves and did a great job.

"I think the race of the day went to Joseph Manilafasha. He had the best race he has ever ran here. I think he finished in the top 10. He is our lowest scoring fifth man in the Big 12 Championship ever. We are really proud of him. We have been looking for a fifth man all year and it looks like he stepped up into that role nicely."

Cowboy junior Girma Mecheso won the individual title with a time of 23:56.94 in the 8,000-meter race, outdistancing teammate German Fernandez by less than two seconds. The Big 12 individual winner in 2008, Fernandez finished with a time of 23:58.20.

"I feel great," Mecheso said after the event. "Our hope was to win as a team, but it was nice to win individual. It was good for me and it was good for the team, but our main goal was to win as a team."

Colby Lowe finished third for Oklahoma State, his third-straight top-five finish at the conference championship. Tom Farrell finished fourth for OSU and was named the Big 12's Newcomer of the Year, while Joseph Manilafasha finished ninth to round out the Cowboys' top-five scorers. Ryan Prentice finished 15^th, garnering All-Big 12 accolades, while Shane Moskowitz finished 33^rd and Johnathan Stublaski finished 42^nd.

Colorado finished second in the team standings with the fifth-, sixth- and seventh-place finishers. The Buffaloes also had the 10^th- and 18^th-place finishers for a team total of 46.

The Cowgirls finished fourth as a team Saturday morning, led by Mihaela Susa's ninth-place individual finish. Felicity Milton finished 14^th while Natalja Piliusina finished 16^th and Victoria Fratczak made the top 20 with a 19^th-place finish. Kate Kujawa rounded out the scorers for OSU with a 32^nd-place finish.

"It was an awesome day," Smith said. "I am really proud of both teams. The women kicked it off and ran really well. We had a great race planned. We knew that we were the fifth or sixth best team coming in, and we knocked off Texas who was the 15th team ranked in the country. We thought we could get past Iowa State, but they ran a great race and held us off. They ran a great race and did a good job."

Texas Tech won the women's team title with 44 points, nine better than second place Colorado. It marked the Red Raiders' third-consecutive Big 12 title. Rose Tanui won the individual championship for Tech, finishing 12 seconds ahead of Iowa State's Betsy Saina.