Senior Karissa Schweizer crossed the finish line at the SEC Championship in Athens, Georgia, on Friday.
Then she waited. And she waited some more.
Over 30 seconds later, the second place finisher, Taylor Werner of Arkansas, finally crossed the finish line.
Schweizer led the pack the whole race on the way to her second straight conference title with a time of 19:36.3. That was Schweizer’s second-fastest time in the 6K race this season and was faster than her national championship-winning time of 19:41.7 last year.
Following Schweizer for the women’s team were seniors Jamie Kempfer and Ellyn Atkinson. Kempfer and Atkinson finished 30th and 41st with times of 21:25.2 and 21:44.9, respectively.
After 2,950 meters, the women’s team sat in eighth place, but a late-race surge from junior Hannah Thomas and freshman Jenna Lutzow saved the Tigers points in the fourth and fifth slots and vaulted the team to a fourth-place finish.
Thomas and Lutzow were in 79th and 67th place near the halfway mark, respectively, but they made significant strides in the back half of the race. Thomas finished in 48th place with a time of 21:51.8 and Lutzow finished in 51st with a time of 21:56.8.
Thomas and Lutzow saved the Tigers 40 points in the back half of a race where there was only a 27-point difference between Missouri and ninth-place Vanderbilt.
On the men’s side, redshirt sophomore Thomas George led the way with a 26th place finish and a time of 24:41.0. George was followed by freshman Austin Hindman, who finished in 39th with a time of 25:04.8.
George and Hindman were followed by redshirt senior Marc Dubrick and redshirt juniors Zach Cook and Evan Schulte. Schulte finished 43rd, while Cook and Dubrick finished 45th and 55th, respectively, to bring Missouri to a seventh-place finish out of 12 teams.
Next up, both teams will travel to Ames, Iowa, for the Midwest Regionals on Nov. 10, where Schweizer will look to defend her regional title from last season.
The women’s team will look to repeat their first-place finish from last year and qualify for the national championship for the second straight year, while the men will look to improve off of their tenth-place finish at last year’s regionals.
_Edited by Joe Noser | jnoser@themaneater.com_