RESULTS

(SAN MARCOS, Calif.) The Landon Bright era is officially off and running for PLNU Cross Country, as the Sea Lions opened up their season on Saturday with a 10th place finish out of 17 teams at the Cougar Challenge hosted by Cal State San Marcos.
 
"We had a good meet," Bright said. "It was our season opener, so we were shaking off the rust a little bit. It was a very hot day and the race went out pretty hard. I think as a group we wanted to be aggressive with the race but we maybe went out a little too hot. We did okay and have a few things we can kind of tweak moving forward."
 
Aubrie Nex was the first Sea Lion to cross the 6K finish line, doing so in a time of 21:55.0 to place 16th.
 
"Aubrie had a pretty good race today," Bright said. "She went out hard and ran about 20-30 seconds faster than last year."
 
After Nex, Sydney Stevens (71st – 23:25.3), Ryley Burns (81st – 23:32.2), Maddie Reeves (85th – 23:44.4) and Taylor Wagner (86th – 23:44.6) rounded out PLNU's scoring five.
 
Elizabeth Satterlee (90th – 23:51.9), Sarah Pratt (96th – 24:03.6) and Bree Gentry (100th – 24:11.4) also finished in the top-100 of the 196-person race.
 
"We have a really tight group of runners two through six, so we've got to keep that group together and move them a little closer to our number one," Bright said.
 
A large majority of the team, with half maintaining freshman eligibility, raced for the first time as Sea Lions.
 
"For close to half our team it was their first college race, so it was something to just check the box and see what we can do the next time," Bright said. "We'll just move onto next week and see what we can do as we progress toward the conference meet."
 
PLNU will race again next Saturday at the Charles Bowles Invitational, hosted by Willamette University, in Salem, Oregon. The race is set to begin at 10:20 a.m.