Barak Watson was the fastest man in one of the biggest stages Saturday at the 37th Annual Charles Bowles Willamette Invitational at Bush's Pasture Park. A total of over 900 runners competed in the meet, which makes it one of the largest collegiate cross country events on the West Coast.

Watson is the owner of a new Cross country 8k school record and has the top 3 times in school history, running to first place in the Men's 8-kilometer race with a time of 24:03.64. He won by about 15 seconds over Matt Frerker from the University of Portland, who finished second at 24:18.48. Associate coach Ben Gall was obviously pleased with Watson's performance this weekend, “Barak ran really well and won the meet in a new school record and is the first athlete we have ever had win this race. Barak had to beat some of the best runners in the country and he did it on a big stage this weekend.”

Results  /  Splits

The Crusader men ended up getting 4th overall and other top performances were Matt Stark in 15th place and Jesse Baggenstos in 20^th. Coach Ben Gall said “We had a lot of other PR's today across the board running at such a quality meet, but Barak and Matt stole the show. Matt had a huge jump from last week to help us strengthen our top 3. We still need to close our gap from our third runner to our 4th 5th and 6th runners but we are getting stronger each week, so hopefully we keep progressing as we ready for the championships season.”

On the women's side Natalie Evans was the top woman Crusader finishing in 28^th place running a PR in 18:34.79. Coach Ben Gall said “A huge positive was Keesha Brown who ran a great race in 19:56.73, she ran well when we are looking to tighten up our 1^st through 5^th runners, and she responded. We are still learning to compete and hopefully we pull it all together at the right time.”