Fayetteville, AR

September 22, 2018 | Blake Cochran

The Lions men’s cross country team competed at the prestigious Chile Pepper Cross Country Festival hosted by the University of Arkansas . The field consisted of 49 squads from across the country, many of which are nationally ranked schools from NCAA DI, DII, DIII, NAIA, and NJCAA . In the program’s first attempt in the festival, the Southwestern of Assemblies of God University (SAGU) captured a solid 25th place overall.

They were led by Zackery Hammond (Fr.), who crossed the line at 71st out of 441 with the time of 25:59. He was followed by Adrian Cedillo (Sr.), who set a personal record with the time of 26:40 finishing 122nd. Cody Walker (Jr.), Robert Herrera (RS-So.) and Jose Alvarez (Fr.) rounded out the team’s top five in 176th, 181st, and 333rd respectfully.

Head Coach Jason Covarrubias said about the men’s race, “We did fairly well today. I told the men coming into the season that although this will be the best competition they will see all season, we will not adjust our training progression for it. We are coming off of the two hardest weeks of training coupled with back-to-back weeks of tough meets (Missouri Southern and Chile Pepper), and they still ran solid. I am proud of these men, finishing 25th out of 49 is nothing to hang your heads over, but it is also not enough to hang your hat on. It is time to go back to work and prepare for OBU in a couple of weeks.”

Both men’s and women’s teams will compete at the Oklahoma Baptist Invitational held at the Gordon Cooper Technology Campus in Shawnee, OK , on Saturday, Oct. 6th.

Southwestern Assemblies of God University is a private, Christian university located 30 minutes south of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex in Waxahachie, Texas. The university was established in 1927, and now offers more than 70 associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees on campus or online. More information is available at www.sagu.edu