Makena Morley wins Big Sky Conference championship

Montana freshman Makena Morley claimed her first conference title Saturday morning when she led from start to finish to win the Big Sky Conference cross country championship at the Cedar Ridge Golf Course in Cedar City, Utah.

She becomes Montana’s first cross country champion since Sabrina Monro won back-to-back titles in 1999 and 2000.

The Montana men finished in sixth place, the women were seventh, but the story was Morley, who took the lead just seconds into the race and held it to the finish line, covering the five-kilometer course in a time of 17:45.

Weber State’s Ellie Child, who ran a 17:55, was the only other runner to break 18 minutes.

“That girl made a statement today,” said UM coach Collin Fehr. “She was strong and determined. She wanted it, and she let everybody know from the start that she wanted it and that someone was going to have to do something really special to take it away from her.

“It was kind of fun running around the course listening to all the talk in the crowd. Oh, they’ll catch her. She went out too hard. That’s too hard of a pace at 6,000 feet. They’ll get her. And they didn’t. The Weber girls made a big push together to try and close the gap, and they couldn’t.”

The Wildcats, ranked No. 27 in the nation, placed their top five in the top 15 overall to win their fourth title in the last five years, but none of them could catch Morley, the only freshman in the top 14.

“I went out hard to see how my legs were feeling,” said Morley. “If they were feeling great, then I was going to keep it going, which is how I usually like to run. If they weren’t feeling super good, I was going to hold back and stay with the pack a little more. They were feeling okay, so I just went for it.

“I never knew how far everybody was behind me, because I never look behind me when I’m running. I knew that they were just going to get stronger throughout the race, so I was like, ‘keep going Makena, keep it up.’”

Eastern Washington finished second behind Weber State. Northern Arizona, Idaho and Montana State rounded out the top five.

 Montana moved up one spot from its eighth-place finish last fall.

“The women put in a solid effort today,” said Fehr. “They were seventh, but the women’s field as a whole was impressive today. It’s competitive. It was really motivating to see our girls push and be in the mix and compete.

“They really had a higher purpose in this race than just running for themselves. They wanted to run for each other, and they really committed to that. They wrote all their names down on their hands before the race so they never felt alone. They never gave up, and you can’t ask for more than that.”

Morley and a member of the men’s team will compete on Nov. 13, at the NCAA Mountain Regional at Albuquerque, N.M.