Five Bison go to NAIA meet
November 10, 2010
Only five athletes will represent Oklahoma Baptist University and the Cross Country National Meet in Vancouver, Washington Nov. 20.
The Bison and Lady Bison failed to qualify as a team after falling short of obtaining the team conference title and not being rated highly enough to win an at-large bid. The men achieved third place behind Wayland Baptist and Oklahoma Christian. The women finished in second place behind WBU.
“We’re in a tough conference. We ran really well, but it just wasn’t enough,” Assistant Coach Zach Johnson said.
OBU will send Cordell Baker and Nathan Ellis to compete in the men’s championships. Baker finished in sixth place overall with a time of 24:17. Nathan Ellis (13th place) and Brandon Dickinson (15th place) finished second and third for the Bison with times of 25:23 and 25:30 respectively. Baker, Ellis and Dickinson were all named as All-Conference athletes.
OBU finished with 73 points, losing to champion WBU by 43 points.
For the Lady Bison, Aubrie Dolliver led the way for OBU with a time of 19:29 and a sixth place finish.
Taylor Painter (7th place – 19:46) and Meredith Stroup (8th place – 19:47) will make the trip with Dolliver to the national meet. Kayla Lee finished in 11th place, and Sarah Taylor finished in 13th to finish out the scoring for OBU. Nadia Majed finished in 14th place, and received All-Conference honors with Dolliver, Painter, Stroup, Lee and Taylor.
The Lady Bison fell 14 points short of Wayland’s 31 points in their effort.
“I was hoping we’d pull it out,” Johnson said. “We had to break up their top three runners, but our top girl was hurt at the Mid-States Classic and she hadn’t run all week. Her first time running again was this weekend.”
Johnson said he was pleased with the amount of recognized athletes OBU had and the way the team ran, and wished his conference opponents some luck in the national meet.
“I knew we could get a lot [of All-Conference performers] up there. Right now I’m just hoping that Wayland and OC [Oklahoma Christian] run well up there, so maybe we’ll have more respect for our conference next year.”
Johnson said he is committed to maintaining the remaining athletes’ health heading into the national meet.
