The Eastern men’s and women’s cross country teams both won the EIU Open Friday, in the only home meet of the season.

The women’s team started the day off on the right foot by placing first and third and having three of the top five finishers in the 5K race.

First place went to Beth Martin with an overall time of 18:03.88, 30 seconds ahead of second place finisher Stacy Sullivan of Western Illinois.

“Our goal was to run a complete team race,” said Martin.

She said staying together for the first 1 1/2 miles was the plan, but after the pack began to disperse, she focused on first place. At one point Martin had about a 400-yard lead on the rest of the competition.

Also finishing in the top 10 were Stephanie Bone (third) and Lauren Rypacki (fifth). These times catapulted Eastern to the team title edging out IUPU-Indianapolis, 37 to 45.

Bone has returned from an injury that left her out of competition all of last year.

The men’s team had six of the top 10 finishers. The rest of the standings only further showed the men’s dominance as the Panthers scored only 18 points as a team. IUPU-Indianapolis took second place in the team competition with 45 points.

Eastern’s Jason Bialka finished first with a new course record of 24:39.39. He broke the existing record by two seconds and his personal record by almost 10.

“We wanted to stay together as a team and have have all of the top spots but it didn’t work out that way,” he said.

Coming in second, with a time of 24:47.53, was Kyle O’Brien.

“(Kyle and Jason) wanted to finish with a 1-2 tie and didn’t plan on that other guy in the mix so i told Jason to go for it,” said O’Brien.

“Our goal was to run a structured team race and I feel we accomplished that goal, ” said Bialka. “We needed to pick it up as a team and we did.”

The Men swept the first three spots with Josh Vance placing third, to round out the trio and lead the team to victory.

Eastern will look to gain more momentum this weekend as they gear up a meet at Indiana State on Sept. 29.