OTAHKS WIN TUNE-UP FOR UPCOMING OVC MEET

The Southeast Invitational was little more than a walk in the park for the Otahkians cross country team.

Southeast boasted the top three finishers and the fifth-place finisher in the women's 3.1-mile race. The Otahkians easily won the six-team event Saturday at Capaha Park.

Murray State finished second with 51 points, led by Lindsay Newlin's fifth-place finish. Arkansas State was third with 100 points, Memphis fourth (110) and Tennessee-Martin fifth (157). Lambuth (Tenn.) had no score.

Janelle Quigley won her third race of the year. The Southeast senior finished in 18 minutes, 15 seconds.

"We wanted to use this as a good workout meet," said Quigley, a native of Alberta, Canada. "It was like a hard practice. In the last mile I pulled ahead. I just wanted to relax and not kill myself."

Quigley ran most of the race with teammate Tammy Wenkel, who finished second in 18:33.

Wenkel, a junior from Owensville, is in her first complete year as a cross country runner.

"Usually, I run with Janelle for just a little bit, and then she takes off," Wenkel said. "She broke away when we were running downhill."

Southeast's Lesli McNamara, of Springfield, finished third with a time of 19:06. She admitted it was far from her best performance of the season.

"We trained hard in practice this week, so it was a day to run tired," McNamara said. "We just weren't as quick, but it was good training."

The Otahkians are in training for the Ohio Valley Conference meet, on Oct. 31 at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tenn.

Eastern Kentucky has won 17 consecutive OVC championships but will face a stiff challenge from one of the toughest Southeast teams in recent history.

"We've been checking their times on the Internet," McNamara said. "We've been running faster than them, but we don't know what kind of courses they're running."

Amy Arteme, a freshman from Kelly High School, finished fourth Saturday on the gradual rolling hills of Capaha. Her time was 19:11. Celeste Ramsey was seventh, with a time of 19:27.

Arteme adds an element of depth that the Otahkians lacked when finishing third at the OVC meet a year ago.

"Last year we really struggled with our fifth person," Southeast coach Joey Haines said. "Amy could really make the difference."

And so could the Otahkians' training approach heading into the conference meet. Although Southeast dominated the competition Saturday, the times were lackluster... by design.

"Last year we ran our best race of the year and kind of peaked here," Haines said. "We didn't run as well at the OVC. So we worked a little extra hard this week to make sure nobody did anything spectacular here.

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Nathan Speer was Southeast's top men's division finisher at the Southeast Invitational.

Speer finished 14th, leading Southeast in its fourth-place finish. Jeff Neumann was 17th (23:19), Tyson Brown 18th (23:22), Brock Alspaugh 24th (23:45) and Adam Shupe 27th (24:51) for Southeast.

Speer, Neumann, Brown and Shupe are freshmen.

"They went out a little conservative," Haines said. "Most of our runners are 800 runners, and they're being asked to run against people who are more suited to this than they are.

"But they have to go out harder."

Murray State won the men's division with 20 points. Murray's Brian Palmer (20:56), Brad Mason and Brian Recktenwald finished 1-2-3 in the race.

Arkansas State was second with 56, followed by Tennessee-Martin (83), Southeast (100) and Lambuth (no score).