Results

SAN DIEGO, California " Pepperdine cross country runner Nick Heath is now 2-for-2 this season as he picked up another big first-place finish, this time at the West Coast Conference Preview meet being hosted by San Diego on Saturday morning.

The Pepperdine men placed third out of six teams at Tecolote Shores North Park in Mission Bay, while the women came in fourth out of six schools.

Heath (Scotts Valley, Calif./Scotts Valley HS) ran the 8K course in 25:18 to finish 15 seconds ahead of the next competitor. The sophomore also won the season-opening Pepperdine Invitational on September 1.

"It was a great day for us," Pepperdine Coach Robert Radnoti said. "Nick won the men's race in exciting fashion once again. He's getting stronger and stronger and it's really neat to see what he's been able to do. Our top three men were running in a pack and I think at one point they were 1-2-3, and then Nick moved ahead and opened a bigger and bigger lead. If you look at our top three, it compares really well to the other teams' top three, so we've just got to get our fourth and fifth runners up there. Overall, it was a great race for our top three guys."

Redshirt junior Nick Blanchard (Portland, Conn./Portland HS) and senior Ben Fox (Colorado Springs, Colo./Cheyenne Mountain HS) also turned in top-10 finishes, coming in fourth and 10th, respectively.

Blanchard set a PR in the 8K with a time of 25:45, moving him up to #12 on the Waves' all-time list. Fox finished in 25:59. The team's other scorers were junior Rudy Gonzalez (Whittier, Calif./California HS) and freshman Treet Allison (Canyon, Texas/Canyon HS).

The women's team was again led by senior Lindsay Sheaffer (Portland, Ore./Jesuit HS), who took eighth place in the 6K with a time of 22:39.

"Beating Pacific, another WCC team, was good for our women's team," Radnoti said. "Lindsay ran in the lead pack for much of the race, and we asked her to do that to push herself as she tries to make the breakthrough from being a middle distance runner to a cross country runner, and she's really making progress. Our next group was our freshmen and we're working on getting them stronger and faster."

The Waves' next five finishers were freshmen, and the four scorers were Samantha Maness (Raleigh, N.C./Broughton HS), Bri Wilson (Murrieta, Calif./Linfield Christian School), Cori Persinger (Lee's Summit, Mo./Lee's Summit West HS) and Izabela Garcia-Arce (Bonita, Calif./Bonita Vista HS).

Today's meet is the same site as the future WCC Championships set for October 28. Pepperdine's third event of the season is the Capital Cross Challenge in Sacramento on October 1.