Cedar City, Utah - The Thunderbird men's cross country team claimed their first Big Sky Conference title on Saturday at the Big Sky Conference Championships ran at the Cedar Ridge Golf Course, taking five of the top ten spots in the 8K race in a strong performance. The SUU womens' team finished in 10th place in the 5K race.

Thunderbird Hayden Hawks finished with the top time on the men's side, finishing the race in 24:56.6. Mike Tate was right behind him with a time of 25:01.1. Matt Wright finished in sixth individually and third for SUU with a 25:42.4 and Josh Collins finished in seventh individually and fourth for the Thunderbirds in 25:43.0. Ibrahim Ahmed wrapped up the scoring for the Thunderbirds with a 10th place individual finish with a 25:58.9.

Hawks led for nearly the entire race, which he said was the goal going in.

“I knew that I needed to control this race,” he said. “This is my home course, I felt like I was the favorite coming in and I knew that if I kept control of the whole race I would win.”

The Thunderbirds also had the 11th and 13th finishers, as Shinano Miyazawa and Istvan Szogi finished with times of 26:08.7 and a 26:15.0 respectively.  

Hawks said the team did a good job working as a team, even with a couple breaking away from the pack.”

“We wanted to put five in the top ten, and that's what we did today, mission accomplished on that,” he said. “I told the guys at the start I was going to kind of go, and they could come with me if they wanted to or the could sit back and work together and I guess they decided to work together. Mike kind of broke away from them, but I would say overall we accomplished our goal here.”

SUU head coach Eric Houle said it was nice to finally be able to break through and take a conference title.

“Each year we've been closing in and closing in, and we thought we had a really good shot this year and obviously it materialized,” he said. “But sometimes when you put on the meet there's so much emotion, and maybe sometimes it's good because I wasn't around them as much as I should be so maybe I didn't mess them up at all. I'm really pleased it worked out, hosting a great meet with good weather and then being able to win one of them is a blessing really.”  

SUU won the men's race with just 26 points. Northern Arizona came in second with 43 points and Weber State finished in third with 96 points. The Thunderbirds broke Northern Arizona's eight year reign as conference champions.   

All-Conference honors were given to the top ten finishers, meaning Hawks, Tate, Wright Collins and Ahmed were all given All-Conference honors.

The women's team finished in 10th out of the 12 teams. SUU's top finisher was Angie Nickerson, who finished the race in 19:02.7 which placed her in 19th individually. Nickerson said the whole event was a great experience.

“It was so much fun,” she said. “It's like a perfect day and it's so pretty out here too. The course is amazing and it was fun having the all the alumni here and all the support. A lot of our families were able to make it, so that's always fun too.”

Josie Brandow finished second for SUU with a 19:50.3, Ashley Tyndall finished third for SUU with a 19:50.6 and Kaylee Boyer finished right behind them with a 19:52.4. Brighton Glassman wrapped up the scoring for SUU with a 20:06.0.

The top runner on the women's side, Ashley Hawks, started the race but dropped out during the competition with an injury.