After getting the season off and running last week in South Dakota the Highland cross country team was back in action on Saturday in Nevada, Missouri at the Cottey College Invitational.

The Highland men raced their way to a team average of 28:46.77 and took third place as a team of six schools, while the Scottie women put forth a day with an average time of 24:06.32 to place fourth as a team out of six teams.

Pacing the Scotties on the day on the men's side was Vicente Correia who notched a time of 28:12.64 to place 11^th out of 62 runners. Three other Scotties finished in the Top 20 as Deiondre Williams, Javon Watkins and Joshua Camp posted times of 28:26.32, 28:33.81 and 29:08.20 to finish 13^th, 15^th and 17^th, respectively.

Max Muenks finished out the team scoring for the men as he finished 21^st place with a time of 29:39.49, while Nick Cisneros took 24^th place behind a time of 30:36.19 and Liam Jones took 29^th place with a time of 31:09.79. Dario Ramirez, Jean Dieuvil and Ryan Ringer all raced also for the Scotties finishing 39^th (32:03.37), 47^th (33:43.31) and 50^th (32:32.39).

"Nine out of the 10 guys ran their first ever 8K, so we ran a little more conservative than I would have liked, that being said I feel there are some big things ahead for this team. Max and Josh both did a great job stepping up where we needed help at Cottey. We had a good week of practice and I look forward to the week off coming up to work on some things we need to improve on," said Head Coach, Chad Clevenger on the men's performance at Cottey.  

Scottie women had all five of their runners finish between 30^th and 40^th place out of 61 total runners in action. De'Janay Davis led the Scotties with a time of 23:12.25 to place 30^th, while Leah Wagner was just behind her in 32^nd with a time of 24:02.78. Octavia Wright, Tiana Bowen and Jennifer Lincoln placed 34^th (24:02.78), 37^th (24:04.67) and 40^th (24:59.41) respectively.

"It was a tough meet for us, as we were not completely recovered from our last meet. We put in some good efforts and I felt Octavia did a great job stepping up when we needed it. We've got two weeks to get ready for Loyola and it will be great to have the women at full strength for the meet," said Clevenger about the women's performance at Cottey.

Highland will look to continue to work to improve in the coming week before getting back to racing again on Saturday, September 28th in Chicago, Illinois at the Loyola Lakefront Invitational hosted by Loyola University of Chicago.