VANCOUVER, Wash. - The Emerald City Open in Seattle, WA has the nickname "the destroyer of legs," and the course definitely lived up to it's name. Multiple 2k loops around the hills of Lower Woodland Park posed a tremendous challenge, however, and through it was an impossible day for personal bests, there were tons of positives to take away for both teams. The Men's team result is not available, but the Women placed fifth overall at the event, ahead of Division II programs from Seattle Pacific University and Central Washington,

There weren't many changes to the finishing order for the Penguin Men. For the fourth meet in a row Branden Chou led the charge, this time finishing 35th overall out of 169 runners in a time of 27:49. Sophomore Timothy Bradshaw was the Penguin number two again and finished 66th overall. Cain Duncan was third in 75th place, just ten places ahead of Sophomore Dylan Stevenson, who ran one of his best races of the season. Elijah Cisneros found himself in the scoring top five for the first time this year, helping to carry the load. Connor Olmstead, who was running the first XC race of his college career, came in sixth for Clark. Coach Owen Frasier was proud of the performance by the Penguin Men, saying: "This race was HARD! Running past that finish line three time has to be tough for anyone mentally. At this point, we know who we are as a team. We know who's going to finish where and we know what we need to do to get to where we want to go. Every single one of our guys needs to run their best and needs to improve. But we believe we're capable of that and we're excited to go make it happen." 

View the full Men's results HERE!

The Penguin Women were facing their toughest team challenge of the season with two of their top five runners sitting out. This situation gave some opportunities for athletes to set up into new roles and make up the difference. One of the biggest risers for Clark was freshman Vaughn Shimko. Shimko ran her race as a Penguin and really excelled running as the number three athlete by cutting down the gap between herself and the top two. Those top two were once again Mia Beightol and Dani Buttrell. Beightol was 13th overall and Buttrell was 27th. They head to the Southern Regionals as two of the favorites to win the race and as the unquestioned two duo for any team. Lauren Filipczak also ran well without being 100 percent and still managed to finish 39th overall. Sophomore Emma Cortez was a scoring runner for Clark for the first time of her career, finished in the top 50. Coach Frasier saw a different attitude in the women in this race from their previous 6k experience. "As a coaching staff, we didn't really think our women competed as hard as they could in their first 6k. Their lack of experience with the distance showed a little bit and they didn't really attack it like we had hoped. That definitely wasn't the case this week. They absolutely showed no fear and ran so hard. I think that knowing the times weren't going to be great due to the course difficulty really allowed them to just focus on their effort; and their effort was amazing."

View the full Women's results HERE!

Both teams will have the upcoming weekend off before returning to action Saturday, October 26th in Oregon City, OR for the Southern Regionals.

---

For the latest news and results, follow Clark Athletics on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or sign up for our e-newsletter to stay up to date with the latest happenings!