BATON ROUGE, La. — Xavier University of Louisiana returned to intercollegiate
athletics Saturday by winning both team championships at the Southern University
Invitational cross country meet on Southern\'s campus.
Xavier\'s women scored 29 points to win their division, followed by Southern with 48
points and Mississippi Valley with 50. Xavier\'s men scored 30 points, followed by
Mississippi Valley with 36 and Southern with 54.
\"I was very pleased to see us come back this way,\" Xavier coach Joseph Moses said.
\"Our runners looked good. Our young folks stepped up. And we\'re going to get
better.\"
Xavier sophomores Ebony Harding and Darren Wallace led their respective teams in
their collegiate debuts. Harding ran two miles in 13 minutes, 19.04 seconds to
finish third out of 19 runners in the women\'s race. Wallace ran three miles in
15:43.14 and placed fourth out of 19 men.
\"I had a lot of nerves out there,\" said Wallace, in his first interschool
competition since running the mile in the District 4-5A track meet for Baton Rouge
High School in April 2005. \"I never felt the adrenaline like I did in this race.\"
Both Harding and Wallace were eligible to compete for Xavier a year ago, but the
effects of Hurricane Katrina — which hit metro New Orleans five days before the
start of Xavier\'s cross country season — forced the university to suspend
athletics for the 2005-06 school year.
\"I was trusting the school would bring back athletics,\" said Harding, a pre-pharmacy
major who, like Wallace, transferred to LSU after the hurricane but returned to
Xavier when classes resumed in mid-January. \"Before the storm the team was so
welcoming. It felt like a family. I really wanted to come back.\"
Harding added, \"I really needed a breakthrough meet. I needed a race to give me some
confidence. This race told me I can still do it.\"
Wallace, a marketing major and a high school classmate of Harding, said his brief
time at Xavier before the hurricane \"were the best weeks of my life. I loved
everything about Xavier.\"
Xavier had five of the nine fastest women, including a 3-4-5 finish for Harding,
Mimi Mornay (13:25.68) and Stacey Young (13:31.14).
Xavier\'s men finished 4-5-6-7-8 in their race. Senior Joshua Miles finished fifth,
three quarters of a second behind Wallace. Joe Drexler-Dreis, a transfer from Miami
(Fla.), was sixth in 16:04.67.
Mississippi Valley runners won both races. Bolte Mhlanga won the women\'s race in
13:16.77, about one second faster than teammate Brenda Reid, and Johnnie Cope was
first in the men\'s race in 15:21.25.
Xavier will compete Friday in the Ragin\' Cajun Invite at Acadiana Park in Lafayette,
La. The 5,000-meter women\'s race will start at 6:30 p.m., followed by the
8,000-meter men\'s race at 7.