2011 Pacific West Conference Cross Country Championships Team Results
(Women's & Men's)

2011 Pacific West Conference Cross Country Championships Individual Results
(Women's & Men's)

Photo Gallery (images by Amos Maru & PacWest Conference)

Goodyear, AZ -- It was a tale of triumphant endings and new beginnings for Academy of Art cross country at the 2011 Hawaiian Airlines Pacific West Conference Cross Country Championships on Saturday. Racing through Estrella Mountain Regional Park, senior Amos Maru closed out his four-year Urban Knight career by winning the competition for the third consecutive year. Supporting the men's 2nd place result, fellow senior Daveson Marindich placed 4th overall with what head coach Charles Ryan called a “gutty performance.” On the women's side, junior Kristen Sanzari earned All-PacWest Second Team by taking 9th individually for the 7th place women's team.

“I'm very proud of both teams,” Coach Ryan said. “I think in many cases, we ran above our heads today. There were a lot of seasonal and lifetime bests. Amos defended his title and that's huge to go out a three-time champion. What he has done for our program really can't be measured. He, along with Daveson and Simon, have been the faces of this program and it will be sad to see them go. But Amos won the race very handily and he looked good doing it.”

Maru successfully defended his title with an inspiring run to cap off his Academy of Art career. Named 2011 PacWest Men's Cross Country Runner of the Year for his performance, the senior posted a new lifetime best of 24:04 on the 8k course which was a full 40 seconds better than his previous best achieved at the 2010 Stanford Invite. He was also over 20 seconds better than the next finisher, Kip Mutai of Grand Canyon.

In similar fashion to last season's finale, Marindich dropped under 25:00 for his lowest time of the year. The Eldoret, Kenya native crossed the line at 24:38.9 which was second only to his time at the 2010 PacWest Championships. The senior took 4th, producing that classic Maru-Marindich one-two punch for ART U one last time. Both Urban Knights earned All-PacWest First Team for their efforts.

Simon Mutai also completed a memorable senior season Saturday. Two weeks after turning in a career best at the 2011 Bronco Invite, Mutai trumped that mark with a sub-26:00 time on the 8k course this morning. He placed 15th and crossed in 25:51.7 to get ahead of the third place runner from BYU-Hawaii.

“They executed the race plan exactly how I wanted,” assistant coach Ben DeLand said. “Amos and Dave continued to do what they've done in their careers and especially this year. Obviously Amos did that better than we've ever thought, running a huge lifetime best at conference. And the plan was for Simon to start out in top 10 and hang on as best he could knowing the density of runners is a lot less so you can't go out conservative and pick people off because of the gaps. You're basically forced to go out faster and stay where you want to finish even if that's different than your normal strategy.”

“Dave had a very gutty performance and I think Simon had the standout performance for me today especially considering he had a rough season last year,” Coach Ryan said. “Simon was head and shoulders better this year and I excited to see him go out like this. Jack ran a great race as a freshman. He was competitive the entire time and always stayed in the mix. Without the performances from Simon, Jack, and Chris Gutierrez, we would have had no business placing where we did as a team. Chris had his best race yet and his performance absolutely made difference between the men taking third or fourth.”

In addition to seeing ART U's top three go out in style, it was also apparent that the Knights have begun to lay the foundation for the upcoming years with freshmen Jack Nevins and Chris Gutierrez each adding strong runs. Nevins claimed 22nd place overall with his 26:22.6 time which was also a season best for the freshman. Gutierrez, who had persevered through much of this season with a shin injury, kept alive Academy of Art's hopes for a top finish with his 27:48.4 time and 33rd placement,

“Relative to last year, we ran much better,” Coach DeLand said. “Jack was the fourth freshman to finish the race so that obviously bodes well in terms of building towards the future. Jack is the kind of runner we're looking to build off of and we really want to get more kids like him. This team is going to be young next year, but it's definitely uplifting to know we're starting with something. And especially knowing he's had a year to experience what Amos, Dave, and Simon all bring to the team with their upfront leadership. He's going to have to step into leadership role next year and it's exciting for him to get that experience so early on in his career. And the same thing for Chris because he too is going to be someone to build the team off of.”

Led by Maru's top finish, the Urban Knights took 2nd overall for the second consecutive year, but this time it was Cal Baptist who won the team competition. With four runners in the top 10, the Lancers were able to steal the victory despite Academy of Art finishing seven points ahead of last year's champion BYU-Hawaii.

“Cal Baptist was clearly the best team at the competition and they deserved everything they accomplished,” Coach Ryan said. “Congratulations to them. The Lancers will be a very formidable team in this conference for years to come. Overall, for our men's team, it's the end of one era and moving on to the next era. We're going to need to do a lot of recruiting, but you can see the overall growth of this conference. It's getting a lot stronger and will have raised expectations going into future. We're all just going to grow along with the conference.”

Men's Team Results

Team	Points
1. Cal Baptist	41
2. Academy of Art	75
3. BYU-Hawaii	82
4. Grand Canyon	87
5. Hawaii Pacific	127
6. Dixie State	134
7. Chaminade	171
8. Notre Dame de Namur	206
9. Dominican	257

Similarly to the men's team, there were athletes on the women's side who absolutely saved their best for last. Sanzari, ART U's top finisher all season long, stayed true to her reputation and placed 9th overall to earn All-PacWest Second Team honors. Her time of 19:06.1 on the 5k course was her best this season by a full 25 seconds and gave her the edge over the top runners from Grand Canyon and Hawaii Pacific among others.

“As a group, the women ran well,” Coach Ryan said. “I have no complaints with how they competed or their performances. The women's competition was much tougher than previous years. Cal Baptist dominated and many of the teams were much improved. Stacey Toth had a great performance. Both she and Kristen should be proud of how they competed in their final race.”

Sanzari's fellow senior Stacey Toth signed off on her Urban Knight career with a strong end result. She improved significantly on the time she had run two weeks ago at the Bronco Invite and stayed right with sophomore Kylie Long in this race. Long was 34th (21:20.2) and Toth came a fraction of a second behind in 35th (21:20.8) in a metaphoric transference of leadership. Toth, the team captain, completes her time at Academy of Art with this race while Long will likely move into that role in 2012.

“With Kristen, even though this is her last year, having a number one that high up in a much more competitive year is a good thing as far as getting the women's program a bit more of a presence up front,” Coach DeLand said. “This whole season has been tough for Stacey dealing with planar fasciitis and while we would have liked to have her more healthy, it was good for her to work with Kylie and help each other out. She helped give Kylie something to use for future seasons and, for Stacey, there wasn't the sort of closure athletes usually have in their final seasons so we'll use that as motivation to get healthy for track season and put up some good times. And for Kylie, she's going to step into a leadership role next year so having Kristen her with Division I competitive background and working with Stacey, the elder stateswoman, the last couple years has really helped.”

“Kylie ran a much improved race as compared to last year,” Coach Ryan said. “She's going to have to step into that leadership role in the future. She's going to be a veteran as a returner next year and we're excited to see that. Heather Castro, Dominique Berry, and Jazmin White all had very gutty performances.”

Qualifying with the fourth and fifth best times for ART U were sophomore Heather Castro and senior Jazmin White. Castro had her highest placement of the season with a 48th result and a time of 23:28.7 while White wrapped up her first cross country season with a 25:35.3 time to take 54th. Junior Dominique Berry also battled through an injury in this race to finish 60th (29:21.1).

The women's 5k race was won by Rachel Young of Dixie State, but the overall team champion was Cal Baptist with all five Lances placing in the top eight slots. ART U's 7th place team result (180) put them significantly ahead of Hawaii-Hilo, Dominican, and Notre Dame de Namur.

Women's Team Results

Team	Points
1. Cal Baptist	30
2. BYU-Hawaii	48
3. Grand Canyon	101
4. Hawaii Pacific	117
5. Dixie State	141
6. Chaminade	173
7. Academy of Art	180
8. Hawaii-Hilo	203
9. Dominican	203
10. Notre Dame de Namur	263

“For men, we closed the season as well as I could have asked them to,” Coach DeLand said. “Cal Baptist just has better depth and is a better team than us and that was fairly apparent going into the race just based off season's results. We knew it would be close between us, a much improved Grand Canyon team, and defending champs BYU-Hawaii. The fact that we were ahead of those teams with all the guys setting lifetime bests was a great performance for us. And I'm very proud of how the team ran today.

For the women's side, it was a bit of a tough day out there. We didn't really know where we stood against other teams in conference. Some are 5k some are 6k so it's kind of hard to tell going in, obviously would have liked to have been a few places higher. We dropped a couple spots from last year, but it's something to build on in the future both with our returners and using the upcoming recruiting class to fill in gaps we need to fill.”