Women's Cross Country Races to Historic Finish
When you’re on your home turf, you can expect to do well, but the 33rd Annual Rice Cross Country Invitational, which kicked off the cross country season last Sept. 15, was just a taste of things to come for the women’s cross country team. By the time all was said and done, the team had run its most successful season in history and racked up a number of significant honors.
For the second year in a row at the Rice Invitational, Marissa Daniels won the 3,600-meter course to lead the Rice women as they dominated the field with a 1-2-3-4-7-8 finish to total just 16 points. Daniels posted 12 minutes, 49.8 seconds, beating freshman teammate Allison Pye by six seconds.
The Rice women returned to action the next week at the Texas A&M Invitational in College Station, where Daniels paced the field of 99 runners to complete the 5,035-meter course in 17:19, 15 seconds ahead of second place. With a 1-3-6-8 finish, the Owls dominated the field of 12 teams, tallying 30 points — well ahead of second-place Texas’ 62 points and the host Aggies’ third-place showing of 71 points. Following the event, Daniels was named the Conference-USA Cross Country Female Athlete of the week.
“Person for person, we stepped up and competed at the highest level. Overall, this was one of the best performances ever by a Rice team.” - Jim Bevan
Stunning the Opposition
Up next for the Owls was a trek to South Bend, Ind., where the Owls stunned eight nationally ranked foes to win the 52nd Notre Dame Invitational on Sept. 28.
Daniels, who completed the 5,000-meter course in 16:59 to finish seventh, again led the way for the then-unranked Rice team, which tallied 118 points — 21 better than second-place and seventh-ranked University of Illinois.
“Person for person, we stepped up and competed at the highest level,” said Coach Jim Bevan. “Overall, this was one of the best performances ever by a Rice team.”
The Owls’ achievement was recognized by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association and vaulted them to No. 7 in the rankings. Daniels was named the C-USA Cross Country Female Athlete of the Week for the second week in a row, and Coach Bevan received the C-USA Student–Athlete Advisory Committee Coaches Choice Award.
The competition didn’t get any easier for the Owls at their next meet — the Pre-Nationals Invitational held at Indiana State University in Terre Haute on Oct. 13. Battling 11 other teams ranked in the top 30, the Owls recorded another solid performance, with all seven runners finishing within 1:03 of one another on the 6,000-meter course and ending the day with 224 points and a seventh-place finish.
Crowning Achievement
The meet marked the Owls’ final tune-up before they traveled to El Paso Oct. 27–28 to vie for their 
second C-USA crown in three years. Rice won the meet in 2005 and finished second a year ago, a single point behind the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The third time was a charm. The Rice women won with a finish of 3-4-5-6-8 and broke the league scoring record with 26 points.
As she did all season, Daniels led the Rice pack, finishing third overall and completing the 5K course in 17:50.3. Pye finished fourth overall in 18:07.0, and Becky Wade took fifth in 18:20.1. All three Owls earned first-team all-conference honors, and Bevan was named the C-USA Cross Country Coach of the Year at the meet.
Then it was on to the NCAA South Central Regional Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., on Nov. 19, where the Rice women made school history by winning the championship and claiming an automatic bid to the national meet.
Going into the meet, Rice ranked second in the region and the Owls produced another tremendous team performance as the top six Owls all finished within 35 seconds of one another, led by Pye in sixth place.
“This was a great year for us, and ranking 16th in the nation is an awfully good finish. The pace today was beyond fast. ” - JIM BEVAN
Pacing the Pack
With the victory, the Owls earned one of two automatic bids from the region for the NCAA Cross Country Championships held on Nov. 19 in Terre Haute, Ind. There, the Rice women’s cross country team concluded its season by finishing the day with 413, earning it 16th place out of 31.
“This was a great year for us, and ranking 16th in the nation is an awfully good finish,” said Coach Bevan. “The pace today was beyond fast, and overall, we ran really well.”
Rice’s string of successes, highlighted by the NCAA South Central Regional and C-USA championships wins, marked the best national team finish in program history: the Owls were 15th of 16 in 1987, 19th of 22 in 1993 and 25th of 31 in 2005.