Senior All-American Laurent Ngrikamaro raced to a third place finish at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships hosted by Mesa State College on Saturday. Ngrikamaro led the Highlands men to a fifth-place team showing in the always tough RMAC meet and earned his second consecutive All-RMAC honors. Ngrikamaro ran 25:10 for the 8-kilometer course.
The Cowboy’s Nicaise Kazingo placed 12th (25:59) in the meet to earn second-team All-Conference accolades. Kazingo was named the RMAC Freshman-of-the-Year as the top first-year finisher in the field.
HU coach Bob DeVries was pleased with the team and the outlook for the Regional Championships in two weeks. “We expected to be fifth, we weren’t running at full-strength. John Ronoh has been sick and I asked both Laurent and Nicaise to hold back a little on some parts of the course, so this is a very encouraging finish for us.”
Number-one ranked Adams State took both the team and individual titles as Aaron Braun 24:35) led the Grizzlies.
Other HU finishers:
John Ronoh 40th 27:29
Gabriel Vidal 48th 27:53
Joshua Garcia 51st 28:01
Will Jarmeko-Wright 75th 30:27
Cesar Alvizo 76th 30:39
Vernon Tosa 80th 32:34
Alex Encinias 81st 34:07
The HU women ran 10th in the 13-team women’s field. Senior Sandra Martinez was the team’s top finisher in 40th. Martinez covered the challenging 6k course in 24:28. She was followed by Ana Juarez (50th/24:53), Reyna Montano (53rd/25:04), Carolina Garcia (63rd/25:33), Kari Anglin (66th/ 25:53), Brieanna Roper (67th/25:57) and Amanda Martin (73rd/26:23).
“We are a better team than this,” said coach DeVries, “I expect this group to race much stronger at the NCAA regional in two weeks.”
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