Cyclone Men Defend Home Course

AMES, Iowa – The Iowa State men's cross country team won the team title for the second consecutive year at the Cyclone Preview. Devan Kipyego edged out teammate Ryan Watts for the top individual finish while ISU had three other top-10 finishers.

"The athletes ran great, we had really nice stuff happen for both the men and women," said director of track and field/cross country Jeremy Sudbury. "On the men's side, we didn't run our top-eight guys returning from last year, so it gave chance for a lot of our sophomores like Devan, Ryan, Galdino and Seth to do the heavy lifting for the program to win."

Kipyego and Watts ran nearly the entire race together, neither leading by more than three-tenths of a second at either the 2K or 4K check points. Both Cyclone men ended up besting the previous 6K course record, set last season by Silas Winders in 17:57.3, by nearly 20 seconds. Kipyego's time of 17:38.8 now marks the best men's 6K ran on the course.

"Ryan and Devan were kind of battling because we have a really competitive team this year and a lot of depth," said Sudbury. "For those guys to run as well as they did and break the course record by almost 20 seconds, even after Silas and Kelvin (Bungei) broke it last year, it shows that training is going really well."

Following Kipyego and Watts, sophomores Emanuel Galdino and Seth Clevenger finished fourth and fifth, respectively. Quinton Orr dove across the finish line to edge out a UNI runner for seventh place, finishing in 18:32.0 to round out ISU's top-10 individual finishers.

Up Next

Iowa State travels to Madison, Wisconsin on September 27^th to participate in the Nuttycombe Invitational. The men's "B" race will begin at 11:40 a.m. CT with the "A" race set to start at 1:00 p.m. CT.

Team Results

1. Iowa State, 18; 2. Drake 54; 3. UNI 60

Individual Results

1. Devan Kipyego, Iowa State, 17:38.8; 2. Ryan Watts, Iowa State, 17:39.3; 4. Emanuel Galdino, Iowa State, 18:15.8; 5. Seth Clevenger, Iowa State, 18:23.5; 7. Quinton Orr, Iowa State, 18:32.0; 11. Allen Bonnessen, Iowa State, 18:46.2; 12. Ernie Mattson, Iowa State, 19:01.5; 16. Riley Simpson, Iowa State, 19:12.0; 22. Darius Kipyego, Iowa State, 19:35.5

Players Mentioned

Seth Clevenger

Emanuel Galdino

Darius Kipyego

Devan Kipyego

Ernie Mattson

Quinton Orr

Riley Simpson

Ryan Watts

Silas Winders

Sponsors

Iowa State University Athletics