Nov. 10, 2007

The UTEP men's cross country team finished second at the NCAA Mountain Region Meet in Ogden, Utah today to receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship Meet next week. The third-ranked Miners scored 56 points, finishing behind defending national champion Colorado with 47 points.

"This is great for us because we have ten days before we go to nationals," Head Coach Paul Ereng said. "Now we are focused on competing at nationals and we can make some adjustments to compete at that level."

Senior Stephen Samoei led the Miners in second place with a time of 29:54.5, finishing 2.4 seconds behind Northern Arizona's Lopez Lomong. Samoei, a two-time All-American has been named Conference USA Athlete of the Week three times this year and took the individual title at the Conference USA Championship Meet. He was the lone qualifier for the NCAA Championship Meet last year.

Patrick Mutai finished two spots behind Samoei in 4th place with a time of 30:14.3. Samoei and Mutai were the highest finishing one-two scoring pair.

"Stephen and Patrick ran very well," Ereng said. "There were a lot of contributing factors, including altitude that affected the meet. But this is the best regional meet we have had since I've been here and it shows how well this team can run at the national level."

The Miners, who did not qualify for Nationals last year as a team after being a nationally ranked team, will head to Terre Haute, Ind. on an automatic bid ticket for the second time in Ereng's UTEP coaching career.

Ereng, the 2007 C-USA Coach of the Year led the Miners to the 2007 C-USA championship title. The Miners scored a record-breaking and perfect score of 15 in that contest.

The Miners bested the Pre-National Meet white race and overall champion Northern Arizona by 28 points. BYU finished in 4th place with 113 points followed by New Mexico in 5th place with 125 points.

Other finishers for the Miners included Nicodemus Ng'etich (15th, 30:55.8), Dominic Tanui (17th, 31:00.6), Japheth Ngo'ojoy (18th, 31:06.3) and Aggrey Chirchir (62nd, 32:58.5).

On the women's side, senior Kelly Young, UTEP's top runner, dropped out of the 6k race with half a mile to run. The Miners finished 15th with 380 points.

The women were led by Jepchirchir Kigen, who finished in 50th place with a time of 22:28.8.

Other finishers for the women were Brissia Montalvo (74th, 22:59.2), Crystal Garcia (84th, 23:13.7), Delia Cesar (89th, 23:18.9), Laura Clarke (90th, 23:19.2) and Perla Retana (103rd, 23:56.7).