Neiva, Zerby Lead Mean Green XC at UIW Twilight

DENTON, Texas – Victor Neiva finished as the runner-up in the men's 6K, and Brenna Zerby placed 11th in the women's 4K to lead North Texas Cross Country to fourth and sixth-place finishes, respectively, Friday night at the UIW Twilight in San Antonio.

Neiva, a junior from Keller, Texas, recorded a time of 18:15 to place second and lead the way for the Mean Green men's team. Mason Garner followed in eighth place at 18:57, Nick Rodriguez finished 16th with a time of 19:22, Cade McAndrew took 25th at 19:37, and Luke Canon placed 37th with a time of 19:59.

"Victor put himself in the mix early and stuck to the plan that we had put out there with him," North Texas cross country head coach Erik Stevens said. "We said get in the mix and then let's just kind of work down over the back half of the race, and he did just that. He cut it to about six seconds from the leader with about 300-400 to go, just didn't have enough real estate to catch him. Overall he ran really smart, ran really well. He still looked pretty controlled, too. It looked like I could have let him go a little bit earlier and he would've been just fine.

"The young guys stepped up pretty big today, too. Everybody on the guys' side came through for us. Mason had a good race, executed the plan really well. We probably could have turned him loose a little bit. The freshmen, Cade and Nick. Cade was my number four, has been training well, came out and showed what he's been doing and just let his fitness take over. I'm really excited with how the guys ran as a unit, because we're going to have to do that, just being a smaller crew. They were able to execute that properly and have some good results with it."

Zerby, a freshman from Coppell, Texas, set the pace for the women's team in her collegiate debut with a time of 15:13 to finish in 11^th place. Miranda Vreeland placed 17^th with a time of 15:27, Tiblets Abreha finished 33^rd in 16:23, Kate Hilty placed 37^th with a time of 16:34, Tori Tauch took 39^th at 16:38, Shannon Cook finished 42^nd in 16:52, and Amy Pritchard placed 45^th with a time of 17:09.

"Brenna, number one, being a freshman, it was great just to see her have that kind of attitude of 'hey, I'm going to run with anybody who's out there'," Stevens said. "She's not afraid of anything, and I love that. You have to have that edge to end up being as good as you want to be at this level. We have to get a little bit more work under our belts to sustain it, and she can be pretty good when it comes down to post-season stuff.

"I think the rest of the ladies will feed off of that as they get some more training in with her. They ran very smart and executed the way that I wanted them to execute, and I think we saw some pretty good results overall. I think it gives us a good benchmark as to where we're at, and it gives me some good ideas as to what we need to do over the next couple weeks to take the next step on that side of things."

Next up for the Mean Green is the Texas A&M Invitational on Sept. 16 in Bryan-College Station.

"I think we're in a really good spot," Stevens said. "It's really early, but everybody's feeling excited and I think we're in a good head space. We're adapting to the training. It gives me a good idea of where we're at fitness wise - how these guys approach a race, the mentality that they bring, the attitude that they bring, a little bit of an edge up front. That's going to pay off for us if we can stay healthy, keep that under control, and keep that right mentality moving forward."

Be sure to keep an eye on MeanGreenSports.com, follow Mean Green Sports on social media @MeanGreenSports and Mean Green track & field/cross country at @MeanGreenTrack for all of the latest information.

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Players Mentioned

Tiblets Abreha

Luke Canon

Shannon Cook

Mason Garner

Kate Hilty

Cade McAndrew

Victor Neiva

Amy Pritchard

Nick Rodriguez

Tori Tauch

Miranda Vreeland

Brenna Zerby

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