Sept. 26, 2009

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Led by Taylor Cloy's second-place finish, the Lamar women's cross country team scored third in the LSU Invitational at Highland Road Park Saturday morning.

Cloy paced the top five runners for LU as they all finished within 1:20 of each other on the 5k layout.

"Taylor probably picked up four or five spots in the last mile alone," LU coach Jake Stewart said after the race. "As a team we probably made up at least 20 points and maybe more over the last 1600 meters so it was another good performance for the group."

Cloy's time of 19:25.69 was second only to Stephanie Aldea of Houston, who was an NCAA qualifier in 2008 and won the same event a year ago.

Samantha Walkow posted a sixth-place finish after clocking in at 19:41.89, while Emily Carpenter crossed the line in 20:07.87 for 15 place.

Daisy Cantu and Nora-Beth Saunders completed the scoring for Lamar with 18th and 26-place showings, respectively.

Lamar finished with 65 points. Houston won the event for the second-consecutive year with 40 points and Nicholls was second with 56 points.

On the men's side, Ryan Kelly ran well and completed the 8k course in 27:28.78. Jose Leos also finished in the top 25 with a time of 27:46.90, good for 22nd.

The men's squad will return to action next Saturday, Oct. 3, at the Wisconsin Inter-Regional Invitational in Madison, Wisc.