XC: Neiva leads Mean Green in Return to Action

DENTON, Texas – In his first meet of the 2023 season, Victor Neiva placed 14th in the men's 8K to lead UNT cross country Friday evening at the Chile Pepper XC Festival in Fayetteville, Ark.

"With Victor doing what he did up front, I was really happy with that," UNT cross country coach Erik Stevens said. "It shows that he is fit, and we're not really even close to getting to the good things yet."

Neiva clocked the 14th-best time of 24:40.9 to pace the Mean Green men's squad to a 15th-place team finish. Luke Canon followed in 91st place with a time of 25:59.1, while Mason Garner (26:02.1) finished 94th, Jake Meyering (26:14.3) placed 109th, Alan Proenza (26:37.3) took 135th, Hardy Swann (26:49.8) finished 152nd, and Jake Johnson (28:25.3) placed 248th.

"Overall on the men's side, I saw some positives today," Stevens said. "Conditions were brutal out there. It was 89 degrees and sunny. We fought through that pretty well over the back half of the race. We executed the way that the race plans were written, but we just didn't quite get to the times that I think we're capable of running. We have four guys sitting within 20 seconds of each other up front, so now we just have to switch that mindset to 'we can be right there with Victor, 20 seconds back of him and change the result'. If we're able to do that, we go from 15th to probably third or fourth overall today, which will start scaring a lot of teams."

Aditi Silwal led the way for the UNT women's team, placing 47th with a 5K time of 18:09.5. Miranda Vreeland finished 124th with a time of 19:01.5, Tiblets Abreha placed 149th with a time of 19:15.2, Trinity Trotter took 156th with a time of 19:17.8, Marisa Jacober finished 199th with a time of 19:42.9, Amy Pritchard placed 267th with a time of 21:12.0, and Addison Sykora took 276th with a time of 21:30.1. The Mean Green finished 24^th overall as a team.

"On the ladies' side, we did a good job of fighting," Stevens said. "Up front, Aditi did great kind of rolling through it. I thought she could run high 17:40s, but she just kind of fell asleep for about 600-800 meters. If she stays awake through that, she probably does it. I think the conditions affected the ladies as well, but we fought through it. We had a couple girls coming back that hadn't raced in three weeks, and we're right in a good spot. I think we have about two clicks to go moving forward and when we're here again in a month, I think we can have a pretty decent showing once we get to that next phase of training."

Next up for the Mean Green is the final regular season meet of the season, the Arturo Barrios Invitational on Oct. 13 in College Station, Texas.

"We're looking ahead to that championship season that's coming up in about four weeks," Stevens said. "We're looking at one more solid phase of training, four weeks through that conference meet. I think we're right there on the cusp of where we want to be. We are just missing a few key workouts and I think once we get those key workouts under our belt, we can really approach everything else with the competence that we need to 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 @MeanGreenTFXC for all of the latest information.

Calendar

Upcoming Events

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Tiblets Abreha

Luke Canon

Mason Garner

Marisa Jacober

Jake Johnson

Jake Meyering

Victor Neiva

Amy Pritchard

Alan Proenza

Aditi Silwal

Hardy Swann

Addison Sykora

Trinity Trotter

Miranda Vreeland

Upcoming Events