2012 San Francisco State Invitational Men's Results

2012 San Francisco State Invitational Women's Results

Photo Gallery (images by Rob Garcia & Michael Nevins)

San Francisco, CA -- Returning to Golden Gate Park for their second meet of the season, the Academy of Art University cross country teams traversed a challenging hilly terrain on Friday for the San Francisco State Invitational. Senior Jenny Bergren highlighted the day by capturing 1st place overall in the women's 6k for an ART U women's squad that took 4th and beat out the host Gators (ranked 27th Nationally). On the men's side, freshman Clemens Kammer picked up 2nd overall among runners from four-year institutions in the men's 8k race.

“The girls had a good overall performance,” head coach Charles Ryan said. “They showed they can be dangerous as a team. Taking down the host team, who was ranked as one of the top in the region is a huge deal. There were lots of positives to take from this meet. The men continue to learn and improve. Jack and Clemens should be a force in the PacWest.”

Bergren persevered through a race unlike the USF Invitational from two weeks ago as SF State's course offered several portions going up and down steeper slopes. But despite the challenging format, she assumed a spot in front of the pack shortly after the first mile and never relinquished it. Strong down the stretch and calmly handling a near-incident with an unaware dog, Bergren crossed the finish line at 21:52, more than 20 seconds better than the 2nd place finisher from Cal State Stanislaus (10th in the West Region).

“It was a really hard race and, in a 6k at the end of a day, it's really taxing on your mental state of mind so the biggest thing is just to try to stay positive,” Bergren said. “Right now, we're in the thick of the season with weight training and some of our hardest workouts and I think we're on a really good track. This is just another race to put behind us and use as a workout for the bigger races that count like conference and Regionals.”

Working to improve up front, senior Zoë Meyers powered into a Top 10 finish with a time of 22:39. Meyers, who would claim 7th overall and cross ahead of the top runner from Santa Clara, ran with freshman Arianna Michaels early, guiding her teammate through a race which seemed to wear on many runners' bodies. Michaels would fight through the pain to finish 27th with a 23:37 mark.

“It was obviously a great race from Jenny and from Zoe [Meyers] right behind her,” assistant coach Torrey Olson said. “Zoe actually closed the gap quite a bit from last time. That gap time was over a minute last race and it was about 43 seconds this time so that's way better and the course was longer so I'm really proud of that. Those are the grad students who have been racing for a long time so by this second race [of the season], they're sort of in the swing of things.”

Senior Cassandra Schumacher was the fourth Urban Knight to place, coming in at 38th (24:43) while junior Kylie Long closed out the group of ART U qualifiers with a 28:05 time good for 44th place. Ahead of Santa Clara, SF State, and UC Santa Cruz, Academy of Art University was 4th overall as a team.


Clemens Kammer completed the 8k race Friday with a mark that was considered second only to the Cal State Stanislaus runner, Dawson Vorderbruegge, who had the top qualifying time. Kammer, who was in only his second cross country meet of his career, posted a 26:04 to lead the Urban Knight men.

“It was a whole lot of new stuff going on and I think we saw some people struggle with that today,” Coach Olson said. “But that's fine, it's the second race of college for most of the guys, three out of four of our true cross country runners.”


Second to Kammer was sophomore Jack Nevins who claimed 13th overall with a time of 26:58. Behind Kammer and Nevins, sophomore Temarius Walker showed improvement from the USF Invitational with over a 20-second improvement to 29:42 and 39th place. Rounding out the ART U five were sophomore Thomas Benson and freshman Shaquille Howard, in 41st and 42nd respectively.

“The people who have had a lot of race experience are rolling at this point and I'm not too worried about them,” Coach Olson said. “Everybody else is still learning and that's fine, but I think we learned what we needed to today.”

ART U now turns its attention to one of the biggest non-conference meets of the season in the Stanford Invitational on Sept. 29 in Palo Alto, CA.