MALIBU, Calif. — Kicking off the 2024 cross country season at home, Pepperdine's men's team placed third and the women's team placed fourth at the Waves Invitational at Alumni Park on Friday afternoon.
While the men's team used a pack-running approach to achieve a 1-minute and 11-second pack time, the women's side used three finishers in the top 20 to finish ahead of fellow West Coast Conference school LMU. The men's team finished with 81 points behind Cal Poly — which won with a perfect score of 15 points — and Long Beach State, which had 49 points. As for the women, the Waves scored 94 points and finished behind Cal Poly (30 points), Long Beach State (50) and Big Ten newcomer USC (73).
In the men's 6-kilometer race, all five scoring runners for Pepperdine placed in the top 25 after the team worked its way up from the back of the main pack. Sophomore Gordy Nilsen broke away from the Pepperdine pack to lead the team with his time of 18:45.4, good for 19th place. Less than 10 seconds later, freshman Elijah Gentry and newcomer Rowan Nilsen — Gordy's twin brother — finished in 21st and 22nd place, respectively. Patrick Thomas and Dominic Silhol rounded out the scoring runners for the Waves, placing 24th and 25th, respectively.
For the sixth consecutive race, sophomore Lizzy Crawford was the top finisher for the Pepperdine women. After hanging with the top pack throughout the race, Crawford covered the 4-kilometer course in 13:27.4 — almost a 30-second improvement over her last 4K time at this course from a year ago.
Competing in her first cross country race since 2022, Eden Mittelsdorf placed 13th with a time of 13:43.0, then sophomore Hannah Miller outkicked several USC runners in the final 200-meters to place 20th in 14:18.0. True freshmen Grace Simpson and Riley Burgess scored for Pepperdine, placing 24th and 29th, respectively to give Pepperdine a significant advantage over fifth-place LMU.
Defending Big West champions Cal Poly swept the men's and women's races. Marikay Schwab of Long Beach State was the top women's finisher with a time of 13:04.0, while Cal Poly freshman Rory Catsimanes won the men's race in 17:23.5.
Pepperdine has several weeks of training before its next meet: a WCC preview of sorts at The Pacific Invite, held in Stockton, Calif. on Sept. 23.
