The Eastern women’s cross-country team defied the odds Saturday, finishing second in the Ohio Valley Conference championship.

The Panthers finished with 66 total points, second to Samford’s 20 points.

The time Panthers put into emphasizing their need to pack together in groups was well spent. The Panthers pulled together well enough for four consecutive runners to cross the finish line within four seconds of each other to clinch the second place spot. Junior Sarah Selby led the panthers and finished eighth overall.

Knowing how well her teammates were doing behind her motivated her to move up as well, Selby said.

“The coaches were talking to me and telling me our girls are doing really well, and I just wanted to move up and pass a couple more girls in front of me,” Selby said.

Sophomore Mallory Fellars knew the importance of staying with her teammates rather than running alone.

“It really helps if you have someone there pulling you along for the whole and you have your teammates there to support you,” Fellars said.

To say that the Panthers beat the odds is an understatement. The Panthers know this because of how many all-conference-team runners were returning from last season.

With 12 out of last years top 14 runners returning this season, the Panthers were going to have to battle hard in order to achieve their second-place goal.

“(Having so many good runners back at conference) makes things awfully hard. It was going to be hard because there were a lot of good girls returning from last year but we did it,” Masanet said.

“For the girls to win second, I was very happy. To go all year and then finish in the top two and beat some teams that should have beat us on paper made me happy,” Masanet said.

With the conference finally behind them, The Panthers will look ahead. Eastern is now setting its sights on the NCAA Cross Country Regional meet.

“We talked all year that our conference goal was to finish top two and finish top 15 at Regionals,” Masanet said. “We can’t control how everyone else runs but given that everything goes well we hope to make top 15.”