Jenny Barringer can finally say she owns the Big 12 Conference.
Barringer won the individual crown at the 2009 Big 12 Cross Country Championship on Saturday as she finished the 6-kilometer race in 20 minutes and 27 seconds, 46 seconds better than runner-up and fellow teammate Allie McLaughlin.
�This took me five years,� Barringer said in a news release. �It took me three years of college to get to the Olympics (3,000-meter steeplechase) and five years of cross country to get to the Big 12 Championship. It means a lot and it means a lot that I came back with a really strong team. This is absolutely the most fun race I�ve had in college so far. It was a really fun day.�
Barringer, a senior, had been the runner-up in 2005, 2006 and 2007 before redshirting in 2008.
Speaking of runners-up, the Colorado Buffaloes women�s and men�s cross country teams both finished second in the tournament.
On the women�s side, Barringer and McLaughlin didn�t receive enough support as the No. 3 Buffs scored 52 points, 14 more than the 2009 conference champion, No. 14 Texas Tech.
�We knew that the Texas Tech women�s team was vastly underrated,� head coach Mark Wetmore said in a news release. �They had not raced in any of the big venues. They ran an excellent race today and we were not going to beat them today.�
The No. 4 men�s team, meanwhile, ran into a buzzsaw as Oklahoma State�s individual runners went in the top four spots. CU scored 56 points to OSU�s 24.
�There isn�t any way for me to review the race plan and pretend that we could have won today,� Wetmore said in a news release. �Oklahoma State is an excellent team and nearly shut us out. We can run better than we did but we weren�t beating OSU on this course today.�
CU�s next meet is the NCAA Mountain Regionals on Nov. 14 at 11 a.m. in Albuquerque, N.M.
Contact CU Independent Sports Editor Cheng Sio at Cheng.sio@colorado.edu.
