CCCC men's cross country lands 3rd-place finish at Region VI

COLBY - In what became a battle of three of the top four teams in NJCAA Division I, the Cloud County Community College men's cross country team would see their streak of two consecutive NJCAA Region VI Division I and Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference West Division Titles snapped as part of a third-place team finish at the 2021 NJCAA Region VI Championships at the Meadow Lake Golf Course in Colby on Saturday.

Tallying a total of 74 points in the NJCAA Division I race, Cloud County would finish 21 points back of NJCAA Region VI Champion and host Colby Community College who had all five of their runners finish in the top-15 to win the meet by 20 points over Northwest Kansas Tech who edged CCCC by a single point to finish with 73 points. Earning a distant fourth-place finish in the 11-team race was Garden City with 105 points while Fort Scott finished fifth with 122 points.

Cloud County's top individual finisher would be a third-place finish from sophomore Awet Beraki who would finish just under 13 seconds off the winning pace with a time of 24:16.16 while Michael Iyali would earn a 13th-place finish in a time of 25:53.11. Just missing out on a top-15 finish would be Kelvin Kemboi who would go on to finish 17th with a time of 26:40.74 while Linus Limo (21st, 27:05.59) and Edwin Kipainoi (24th, 27:14.14) would finish as the fourth and fifth finishers to count towards the T-Bird team score. Also competing on Saturday for CCCC would be Elmer Sotelo (31st, 27:59.16), Rylan Cheney (36th, 28:15.12), and Raziel Patton (42nd, 28:44.57) as all eight Cloud County runners would finish in the top-45 of the 89-runner field.

Scores in terms of the KJCCC West Division team race would see a slight change from the Region VI Championship scores as the top-three of Colby (47 points), NW Kansas Tech (57 points) and Cloud County (63 points) would remain the same with all three seeing their team scores lower due to the split between East and West Division schools.

Post-race awards
With top-15 finishes in the race, both Beraki and Iyali would earn All-Region VI honors for the second consecutive year as Beraki would also earn All-KJCCC West for a top-seven finish among KJCCC West Division runners.

What's next?
CCCC will look towards a strong finish to the season in two weeks with a trip to Richmond, Virginia to take part in the 2021 NJCAA Division I Cross Country Championships. Cloud County will be going for a fourth-straight top-10 team finish after finishing in fourth place last year as the highest-finishing KJCCC school.  

-cloudtbirds.com-