Georgia Southern University’s cross country team placed fifth at the University of West Georgia Invitational this past Saturday, and leading the way was senior Sara Curry finishing 14^th and senior Lindsay Mullican finishing 23^rd.

“The course had a lot of rolling hills. Anything that has something with hills it is kind of difficult because that’s something we cannot practice regularly, but I felt like they handled it very well. I thought individually we had some really good performances. I think some of the individual performances mimic the gains that some individuals made, so I’m really happy with it,” Mincey said.

The UWG Invitational was a brand new course for the Eagles. This course included several hills and was a loop course that was all ran on grass. This course was made to test the runners’ ability and endurance the entire race.

“We approach it as every competition, and we try to follow our race plans, do what we’ve practiced and just continue to try to do that. We try to concentrate on what we’re doing. We like big competitions, but, at the same time, it’s about individual performance and reaching those individual goals,” Head Coach Marlo Mincey said.

In the 5K course, Curry finished 14^th with a time of 19:31.00 and Mullican finished 23^rd with a time of 20:27.22.

Not far behind, Asea Mayfield placed 34^th with a time of 21:39.59, Kristiana Towns came in 38^th with a time of 22:09.89 and Amanda Ventre came in 53^rd with a time of 23:50.43.

“We’ve been doing a lot of mileage and a lot of speed work, just getting our base in. So, we are pretty prepared for any race I feel like that comes at us,” Curry said.

The runners were confident, but believe there is always room for improvement, Mullican said.

Mullican said, “The goal is always to improve, get better from the last race, and try to PR from the last race. And just get better for conference.”