Men’s cross country team tops C-USA preseason poll

Sports

Senior Evans Kiprono leads a pack of runners during a 2015 practice at Kidd Field.

Javier Cortez, Web Editor • August 24, 2016

To no surprise the UTEP men’s cross country team was picked to finish first in the Conference USA preseason poll for the upcoming 2016 season. The Miners received nine first place votes out of 11 possible votes.

The Miners are going into their 2016 campaign with five returning runners, the most notable being sophomore Jonah Koech. As a freshman, Koech received All-American honors, becoming the first freshman to receive All-American honors since former Miner great Anthony Rotich did in 2012.

As a team, the Miners blew away the competition, winning the 2015 Conference USA Title by 38 points, before finishing 11th in the NCAA Championships.

The Miners open their 2016 season on Sep. 3 in Albuquerque, NM. at the UNM Invite.

About the Contributor

Javier Cortez, Staff Reporter

Javier Cortez is a staff reporter for The Prospector. He is a senior multimedia journalism major, with a minor in English Rhetoric. Javier was born and raised in El Paso, TX and before coming to UTEP in the summer of 2012, he graduated from Irvin High School, where he was a four-year varsity tennis player, a member of student council and a class officer for his graduating class. He has also worked for the El Paso Diablos as a sports information intern on their media relations team. In his spare time, Javier loves to write columns for the perspectives section in the school newspaper—whether it is sports, pop culture, religion, and society he loves to write about it. To go along with writing, Javier loves reading anything about sports, religion, and non-fiction.