Junior Brenda Torres collapsed as she crossed the finish line.
For the last 500 meters of the Ohio Valley Conference Championship race, Torres gave it all she had to try and catch the runner in first place.
She got within a second of the school record but could not catch Southeast Missouri junior Nova Ojutkangas.
“I was really kicking there at the end when I saw I was in second, and I was just running out of fear just trying to get to the line as fast as I could,” Torres said.
She finished second while both Eastern men’s and women’s teams finished fourth at the Tom Woodall trail on Friday morning.
Tennessee Tech won the OVC for the women’s six-kilometer race, and UT Martin won the men’s eight-kilometer race.
Torres started out the race fast, as she was second for about five of the six kilometers.
As a team, however, Eastern started dropping as the race progressed. After the first two checkpoints, Eastern was in second place. The Panthers slowly dropped after that until they stayed at fourth.
Head coach Riley McInerney said that he expected Tennessee Tech, SEMO and Southern Indiana to all be close with Eastern ahead of the meet.
“We put ourselves in a spot going into this race where we had a chance to win the conference meet,” McInerney said. “Today just wasn’t our day.”
Torres was honored with first team All-OVC and senior Rylea Borgic was honored with second team All-OVC as she finished 10th.
The men’s team started a little differently than the women’s did. Through the first three kilometers, three of the men’s five top runners fell back into the mid-20s.
Eastern would not recover as those three runners finished in those spots as well. McInerney said that he told his team they needed to start fast as the team would not be able to pass enough runners at the end.
“We maybe just started a little too far back, and that’s one thing we kind of talked about,” McInerney said. “You have to be in a spot when the race is developing, and I think that’s kind of where we missed the mark a little bit.”
Junior Cale Smith, however, started as fast as McInerney wanted.
“Cale Smith put himself in the top three right away and really went for it,” McInerney said. “And so that was obviously awesome by him,” McInerney said.
Smith would lose some places but still finished with second team All-OVC honors at 12th place.
Senior Michael Atkins started a little slower than he wanted. He still ran the fastest he ever had on his home course by six seconds, but he still wanted more for his last conference race.
“It’s hard to be upset, but I had big goals coming in for myself,” Atkins said. “I’m a little upset with how I raced early on. It got pretty hard, and I settled, and a gap formed.”
Atkins still finished in ninth with a second team All-OVC honor.
Atkins said the entire day was emotional for him as it was the last time he would race on Eastern’s course.
“My senior class and I, we group hugged at the end, and we cried a little bit,” Atkins said. “We’re tight here. It’s family.”
EIU finished right behind SEMO by only one point.
UT Martin senior Luke Johnson was able to get first after overtaking USI junior Alex Nolan. Nolan led for almost the entire race by a good margin until the last 1,000 meters where he dropped and finished at third.
UT Martin and Southern Indiana ended up tying at 62 points for first place. UT Martin won the tie breaker as its top three runners finished ahead of USI’s.
That was the first time since point totals started being recorded in 1997 that two teams were tied for first place in the OVC Championships.
Eastern now has the NCAA Midwest Regional in Oklahoma to worry about. That event is set for Nov. 14 at 9 a.m.
Patrick Schmitz can be reached at 581-2812 or at pfschmitz@eiu.edu.
