The Missouri Southern cross country course played host to the 26th annual First to the Finish Southern Stampede, Saturday, with the men’s team finishing third and the women taking fourth place overall.

The women had four runners in the top 26, led by sophomore Emily Harris, who placed 16th.  The men had four runners in the top 21, including senior Eric Schott, who finished first, taking home the individual title after finishing 17 seconds in front of his nearest competitor.

“It’s nice to win any race, especially one on your home course, but overall it’s just a stepping stone for the bigger goal,” said Schott. “We learned a lot of things we need to work on from yesterday’s race, and now we can work on fixing those.”

Assistant men’s and women’s coach Jamie Burnham has been working with Schott during the offseason.  

“I felt pretty good about it; we talked this week about how he felt about the race, and he kept saying he felt good coming into it, so I felt he had a pretty good shot to win it,” Burnham said.

Despite Schott’s individual victory, the team is not resting on its laurels.

“Eric obviously ran well, but we have quite a bit of work to do with runners three, four, five and six,” said head coach Bryan Schiding. “We’re happy, it was a good race, it wasn’t an outstanding race, it wasn’t a great race, but it was a solid race for the team; it shows that we have a lot of work in front of us for the rest of the season.”

The women’s team scored 110 points on the day, finishing as the top Division II team in the race.

“It’s a tough race, but we showed up against the DI schools and held our own,” said senior Kaitlyn Belisle. “Being the first D II school wasn’t a surprise, but I was pretty shocked at how solid our group is this year.”  

Head coach Patty Vavra said her team needs to work on packing together on the course, but liked the way her team performed.

“I though we ran well as a team. As a coach, one of the first things I’m going to do is look at the things we could have done better,” said Vavra.  “I thought Emily Harris ran very, very well, and I expect to see Dora Eastin and Kaitlyn Belisle right there with her within the next meet or two. We know there’s places where we can still be a little bit better, so it was a good opening race to find that out.”

The Lions’ next race will be the Chili Pepper Invitational Oct. 4 in Fayetteville, Ark.