The Cal Poly Mustangs Cross Country programs came into 2023 with a mission of repeating as Big West Conference champions. This year, they hosted the Big West Championships at Blacklake Golf Resort in Nipomo; something they haven’t done since 2016 as they went on to defend their Big West titles.
On the men's side, all eyes were on graduate transfer and two time All-American Davis Bove who came in from LSU this fall. As a Mustang, he came in undefeated but he wasn't the only competitor to be reckoned with.
As a team, they came in ranked 7th in the West Region for Division I and they showed it early. In the first of four laps, six Mustangs were out in front of the pack.
But in the final lap it was a stalemate between Bove and Aidan McCarthy as Bove separated himself by a narrow margin towards the end.
Bove finished with a time 23:37.4 seconds to capture the Big West Individual title while McCarthy finished second with a time of 23:41.6.
“Super exciting to get a win," Bove said. "It's extra special when it's a conference championship, when you're at home and when I have the teammates that I do and the coach that I do.”
Cal Poly repeats as conference champions with a score of 27 points as they blow out the competition with six runners in the top 15 for Cal Poly. For context, second place U.C. Santa Barbara finished with 87 points.
“We run with the confidence that we are the best and we are," Bove added. "We just kind of take that part and try to push the expectations away and just have fun.”
On the women’s side, Cal Poly came in as the 9th ranked team in the West Region as they would have their hands full with the only ranked team ahead of them: U.C. Davis.
From the start the two top runners were U.C. Davis' Sierra Atkins and Brianna Weidler who both held commanding leads but Cal Poly would hang around as a team down 8 points in the final lap.
Atkins and Weidler finished first and second for U.C Davis but redshirt junior Schuyler Gooley came in fourth place with a time of 20:34.0 and all the sudden Mustang runners started pouring in.
Six runners Cal Poly runners finished in the top 15, good enough for a clean sweep. Mustang women get a come from behind win on some brilliant finishes down the stretch finishing with 39 points. U.C. Davis finished behind them with 58.
“I'm super proud of everyone on our team," Gooley said. "I think the last thousand meters everyone stepped up and my coach said before we started the race, this is going to be a a dogfight to the finish. This isn't going to be easy.”
Carissa Buchholz had a late push to capture 8th, one of many late pushes from the Mustangs that put them over the top.
“As I'm running through that last K, you have people on the sidelines just saying like, like you got to go,” she recalled. "You know you got to push yourself to the end and catch as many people [as you can].
With back-to-back sweeps for Cal Poly, their next test is NCAA Regionals in Sacramento Nov. 10.
