Goddard Earns All-Freshman Honors, Aggies Complete SEC Championships – Texas A&M Athletics

By: Tyler Pounds, Athletics Communications

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The Texas A&M men’s and women’s cross country teams completed the Southeastern Conference Championships, while freshman Gemma Goddard earned All-SEC honors Friday at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course.
 
Eric Casarez led the men’s team to a ninth place finish (229 points), while Goddard paced the women’s team to an 11^th place finish (270 points).
 
Running in a cold 50-degree drizzle, Casarez got out the starter’s box hot running with the front pack splitting the first 2,000m at 5:51.6. It was around the 3,000m mark the sophomore began slipping in the standings before falling out of the top-20. The Fort Worth native placed 25^th overall with a time of 24:18.0.
 
Brady Grant (31^st, 24:30.3) and Gavin Hoffpauir (49^th, 25:01.3) each recorded top-50 finishes, while Juan Arcila (67^th, 25:20.6) and Jonathan Chung (70^th, 25:28.9) rounded out the top five scorers for the Maroon & White.
 
To the contrary in the women’s race, Goddard paced herself to a 2,000m split of 6:59.4 running in 81^st place. The Austin native slowly began making her move passing runners one after the other before finishing 36^th overall at 21:32.4. In the field of 139 runners, Goddard was the second-fastest overall true freshman earning Women’s Freshman All-SEC honors.
 
Other top-five finishes for the women’s team include Julia Black (52^nd, 21:49.0), Abbey Santoro (54^th, 21:50.5), Grace Plain (61^st, 21:56.7) and Maddie Livingston (83^rd, 22:19.3).
 
Next Up

Texas A&M takes a week off from competition before entering the NCAA South Central Regional on Nov. 12 in Waco, Texas.
 
Texas A&M Quotes
Distance Coach Wendel McRaven
on the men’s team…
“We’re not ecstatic, Eric was probably a little disappointed with his individual race. I was really pleased with Brady [Grant], he stepped up and ran a solid race for us. I thought Brady [Grant] and Gavin [Hoffpauir] did a nice job early in the race finding each other. Our strength on the men’s side has to be having a tight two through five split, that’s who we are. We are not good enough to run by ourselves and run individually right now. We didn’t do a great job of executing that and…