Women's cross country team places second at BYU Autumn Classic

PROVO, Utah -- The BYU women's cross country team placed second overall at the BYU Autumn Classic on Friday, finishing behind No. 17 Weber State and ahead of Utah Valley University and Idaho State.

It was the Cougars' third race of the season and head coach Patrick Shane believes his team is on the right track.

"It was a solid effort when you consider we have eight or nine runners we haven't raced yet because I feel we need to wait a little longer to open their season," Shane said. "I feel like we are further ahead than I expected at this point. Lindsey and the others have been racing well, so it puts us in a good position for the big races coming up."

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In her first race of the season, Lindsey Sowards Nielson led BYU and finished fourth overall with a time of 17:23.1. Candace Eddy Carlisle finished 9th overall in 17:54.8 and the rest of the Cougars' top five was rounded out by Maren Hanson Fassmann (17:57.3), Carrie Jube (18:06.0) and Makenna Smith (18:08.8) who finished 11th, 13th and 16th overall, respectively.

"I was injured last year, so I haven't ran in a cross country race in two years," Sowards-Nielson said. "I worked really hard over the summer in order to make sure I'm healthy and I'm pretty happy with the way things went. It's feels really good to be running again."

Weber State's Amber Henry led all runners with a 5k time of 16:58.9.

Full results for the BYU Autumn Classic Invitational can be found here.

The Cougars will head for Toledo, Ohio, next week for the Toledo Inter-Regional Bubble Buster on Sept. 21.