AUSTIN, Texas — St. Edward's women's cross country opened the season with a new lineup tasked with carrying an established standard forward. Two months later, its youngest runners have raised that standard, rewriting the record book while helping the Hilltoppers find their footing ahead of the Lone Star Conference Championships.
St. Edward's will compete Saturday, Nov. 7, at LCU Cross Country Course in Lubbock, Texas. The women's 6K begins at 9:45 a.m., with coverage available on FloCollege.
Picked seventh in the preseason conference poll after finishing seventh last year, the Hilltoppers entered head coach Chase Rathke's second season with four returning runners. Freshmen LILY BURTON and ABIGAIL PINON have since emerged at the front of the lineup, giving St. Edward's two runners capable of securing valuable points before its supporting pack crosses the finish line.
Burton has led the Hilltoppers in each of her three collegiate races, progressing from an 18:36.5 debut at the Texas A&M Invitational to a school-record 17:59.7 at the Chile Pepper Festival. Pinon followed in 18:02.3 at Chile Pepper, giving the freshmen the two fastest 5K performances in program history in the same race.
Both took another step forward at the DBU Old Glory Gallop. Burton lowered her record to 17:40.2, finishing 19th overall, while Pinon crossed in 17:57.7 to become the second Hilltopper woman to break 18 minutes. St. Edward's finished 10th in the 43-team field in its final race before the conference meet.
Saturday adds another kilometer to the distance the Hilltoppers raced throughout their regular season, placing a greater premium on patience, positioning, and maintaining contact through the closing stages.
Behind Burton and Pinon, St. Edward's has shown how much a connected group can contribute. At Chile Pepper, BRIANNE VASQUEZ, Adriana Rodriguez, and EMMELINE SHAW finished within 2.9 seconds of one another, completing the scoring lineup as the Hilltoppers placed 16th and ahead of UT Tyler. VICTORIA HOYT gave St. Edward's six runners under 19 minutes.
Rodriguez and Hoyt supplied the next two scoring performances at Old Glory, running 18:42.9 and 18:50.6, respectively. Shaw completed the scoring five in 18:54.8, giving St. Edward's five runners under 19 minutes for a second consecutive meet. Their ability to hold positions and work through nearby runners will be central to translating the freshmen's early points into a stronger team finish.
The regular season offers evidence of both opportunity and a competitive conference field. St. Edward's finished ahead of UT Tyler at Texas A&M and Chile Pepper before the Patriots reversed that order at Old Glory. In Fort Worth, the Hilltoppers finished just 21 points behind UT Tyler and ahead of Cameron, UT Dallas, Texas A&M International, Western New Mexico, and host Lubbock Christian. West Texas A&M won the meet, with DBU third, Midwestern State sixth, and Oklahoma Christian eighth.
Those results provide a reference point heading into Saturday, when a smaller field and longer race will give each place a different weight. For St. Edward's, moving forward will depend on sustaining its strength at the front while closing the spaces throughout its scoring five.
The Hilltoppers will also get championship experience on the course that hosts the NCAA Division II South Central Regional on Nov. 21. First comes the meet Rathke identified before the season as the target of each preceding race: a chance for a young team's steady progress to become a postseason performance.
