Bruin cross country claims ninth, third at weekend invitational

Senior Garrett Reynolds said Saturday was a tone setter.

UCLA cross country’s No. 24 men’s squad claimed third place at the Bill Dellinger Invitational in Springfield, Oregon, on Sept. 28. UCLA finished behind No. 11 Oregon and No. 2 BYU, trailing them by eight and two points, respectively. The No. 27 women’s team placed ninth.

“It was our first true race as a team this year and I think that got us really excited for the rest of the season,” Reynolds said. “It was extremely helpful to race (BYU and Oregon), to get a really good feel of what (the NCAA championship) is going to be like.”

The leaders went out in the first mile of the 8,000-meter race with a 4:40 mile pace, Reynolds said. Among them were Reynolds and redshirt seniors Colin Burke and Robert Brandt – the race marked Brandt’s return to UCLA cross country since leaving the program in 2018 with an injury.

Brandt and Reynolds ran in tandem for the majority of the course with Burke trailing just a few meters behind, until Brandt signaled to his teammates with a mile to go that he was making his move.

“The way I tend to win races is on a longer, sustained kick,” Brandt said. “I like to grind it out from a little further and try to drop guys. Coming up on the 4-mile mark … I looked at them and they knew.”

Brandt pulled away from the pack and eventually placed two seconds behind BYU runner Conner Mantz for a second-place finish with a time of 23 minutes, 26.4 seconds. Reynolds said he started to break down in the final stretch, but seeing teammates Brandt and Burke beside him helped him summon some extra strength for his fifth-place finish of 23:35.3.

“It’s much easier to hurt a little more when you know you’re running for your team,” Reynolds said. “We have a really good unity this year and I think it makes it that much easier to run for others when it gets tough in the race.”

Burke placed seventh with a time of 23:38.5. Although the Bruins placed third overall, no other school had its top three runners cross the finish line faster.

Brandt said he’s seen a growth in the maturity of his two teammates.

“(Reynolds has) really stepped up as a leader. Same with (Burke),” Brandt said. “I think for them just having the confidence that they can run with BYU and Oregon is huge … It took having a good performance yesterday to fuel them for the rest of the season.”

For the women’s squad, junior Christina Rice crossed the finish line in the 6,000-meter race first for UCLA with a tenth-place time of 20:05.7. The women’s team failed to achieve the goal assistant coach Devin Elizondo had set to defeat unranked teams Texas and Oregon State.

“We definitely didn’t achieve the goal we came to do,” Rice said. “We wanted to beat a couple teams that weren’t ranked behind us since we did start the season ranked.”

The Bruins’ next stop will be Madison, Wisconsin, where they will compete in the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational on Oct. 18.