ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The pack of Steve Flint, Dylan Shawhan, Conner Peloquin and Aaron Fletcher pushed No. 15 BYU men's cross country to a third-place finish at the 2014 NCAA Mountain Regionals Friday at New Mexico Golf Course.
"We wanted to run within ourselves," BYU head coach Ed Eyestone said. "We felt that a third or fourth-place finish, along with our other credentials, would qualify us for nationals."
Flint, Shawhan, Peloquin and Fletcher all finished in the top 25. Flint, a senior from Bayfield, Colorado, paced the Cougars with a time of 30:17.4 on the 10k course — good for 18th overall. Jonathan Harper's 35th-place finish rounded out the scoring for BYU.
While the top two finishers, No. 1 Colorado and No. 10 Northern Arizona, receive automatic bids to the NCAA National Championships next Saturday, Eyestone believes his team will receive an at-large berth. BYU finished second overall at the Notre Dame Invitational and the West Coast Conference Championships earlier this season, in addition to first-place finishes in two local meets.
If the Cougars are selected as an at-large team, Eyestone hopes to have inured senior Spencer Gardner back, as well as junior Jonathan Nelson, who pulled out of Friday's race. Additionally, freshman Connor McMillan, who has three third-place finishes for BYU, rested a week in preparation for nationals.
Selections for nationals will be announced tomorrow at 1 p.m MST. Pending a berth, the Cougars will return to the championship course in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Saturday, Nov. 22.