AVE MARIA, Fla.- The Ave Maria University cross country teams once again swept The Sun Conference's weekly awards, thanks to their performance at the FLRunners.com Invitational. In just her second race on the roster, Theresa Long was named female Conference Runner of the Week, while Joseph Perreault was named Sun Conference Runner of the Week on the male side for the second time.
Ave Maria has been the dominant force in the conference's weekly awards this season, taking seven of the 12 honors handed out. Four of the six men's awards have gone to Ave Maria (two for Perreault and one each to Jackson Pope and Adam Paga), while three of the six women's awards have gone to Gyrenes, with the first two earned by senior Mary Goetz.
Since her debut at the Ave Maria Invitational, Theresa Long has immediately become Ave Maria's top female runner. She again showed her prowess in Lakeland with a second straight top 5 finish. Long finished fifth in a field of 103 runners, crossing the finish line at 19:30.07. Long's time was the fastest for any AMU runner this season, and ranked among the top 20 5k times in school history. She was one of only eight runners of the 103 to finish the couse in Lakeland in less than 20 minutes.
Long has been Ave Maria's top runner in each of her first two races on campus, breaking the 20-minute mark both at the Ave Maria Invitational and the FLRunners.com Invitational. She also helped the Gyrenes to a top-three finish in both events, and both of her times ranked in the top 25 in school history for a 5k course.
Joseph Perreault was the top Ave Maria finisher in Lakeland on the men's side, crossing the finish line in 27:55.34. Of the ten runners that finished ahead of Perreault, seven came from NCAA Division I USF, two more were unattached, and the other hailed from NCAA Division II Nova Southeastern. In a race of 75 runners, Perreault was one of just 14 to run the Holloway Park course in under 28 minutes.
Perreault has been named the Sun Conference Runner of the Week after the National Catholic Invitational and the FLRunners.com Invitational, which also mark the two occasions in which he has paced the AMU contingent. Perreault has broken the 28-minute mark in each of his last three 8k events.
After competing five times in the first six weeks of the season, the AMU cross country teams will take their longest break of the regular season, as the Gyrenes do not run again for nearly three weeks. Ave Maria's next race is on October 23, when the Gyrenes run at the Southern States Cross Country Challenge, hosted by the University of South Carolina Beaufort. That race is the final race of the regular season, with the Sun Conference Championships following on November 6.
