Dusan Makevic lead the way for the Warhawks at the 25th annual Chile Pepper Festival in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The men’s team placed ninth overall and the women placed 14th.

A large variety of colleges and universities participated with 39 teams in total. Rebecca Dark finished the race with a time of 20:11.6, just 10 seconds behind the Warhawks top female finisher, Pauline Muiruri.

“We all did pretty good for how we’ve been training,” said Dark. “We’ve had a lot of bye weeks and a lot of time to get a lot of good training in.”

The weather at the time of the race was less than spectacular, affecting the runners’ ability to run to their full potential.

“The course was really muddy and the conditions were really bad,” said head coach Karoly Varga. “They still were tough mentally and they still did really well.”

Varga wasn’t pleased with the men’s team performance but he thinks that an experience like this will be good for them in the long run.

“I was kind of disappointed because I know we are in better shape, way better shape, than what we showed at the Chile Pepper,” said Varga. “I do believe they should’ve been in the top three if we would have ran the race what we should’ve run.”

LSU and Louisiana Tech are a two of the other Division I cross country teams that the Warhawks finished ahead of. Makevic’s time of 25:56.8 put him at 59th overall and in the top position for ULM. He was followed closely by his teammates Silah Chumba and Hillary Kirwa.

Prior the race, the team was national ranked as the No. 12 team in the South Central Region.

“We’re going to have to work harder and use these few weeks that we have off to train really hard and bounce back,” said Brent Turner.

Turner clocked in a time of 27:54.7and finished 207th overall.

The topped ranked team in competition, No. 6 Arkansas, won the race.

The Warhawks will run again at the Crimson Classic in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Oct. 18.  That is the last race before the Sun Belt Championships on Nov. 2 in Troy, Alabama.