Men's Cross Country | 8/30/2025 12:47:00 AM
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Oklahoma Panhandle State men's and women's cross country teams began their seasons late Friday evening at the Terry Masterson Twilight Classic, with seven total individuals competing.
Women 3 Mile Run: All four Aggie women in competition Friday finished inside the top 50 of 66 total competitors, a race that featured a slew of runners from NCAA Division I-Wichita State.
Shania Chavez clocked a time of 20:34.4 to pace OPSU, fewer than 25 seconds behind the 15th-place Wichita State competitor.
"
Shania Chavez had a really good race today," head coach
Cyrus Hall said. "I feel really good about her."
Lillyan Gerow and
Carolina Valenzuela bunched up in 24th and 26th place, respectively, with times of 21:07.6 and 21:22.7.
Carli Valdez completed in 23:17.9 to snatch 49th.
"The other three girls I thought ran pretty solid. They maybe got out a little fast, but they ran well," Hall said. "We only ran four and we've got six, so we've got a couple girls that we've got to get up to speed, because cross country's a team sport. We've got to have five to score … so hopefully next time out we can get one of these other two girls in and see what our team score looks like."
Men 4 Mile Run: Josh Samaron and
Trevor Youngblood both finished well in the season-opener, placing comfortably inside the top half of 95 finishers.
Samaron came in at 23:30.4 to take 34th place, while Youngblood raced to a 41st-place showing with a time of 23:49.8.
Bramhan Matschek rounded out the trio with a time of 27:23.8.
"I thought the men ran pretty decent tonight," Hall said. "Josh ran pretty well. We tried to tempo this race tonight – we're still working into shape, and we haven't really had a lot of speed work in us, so we thought our tempo would be good and progressively get a little better as we run each mile. I though the boys did really well with that."
"The big thing I think … it's been raining a lot for the last week, so the course is kind of wet and soft, so it's hard to really get going on soft ground. … Every lap you run can make it a little tougher to run fast, so, really solid run by the guys and the girls. We're looking forward to a couple weeks of training, and we'll go to Texas and see if we can't be a little better."
What's up next: The cross country teams head to Wichita Falls, Texas, on Sept. 11 for the Mustang Derby hosted by Midwestern Sate University Texas.
