St. Mary's University News Center

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SEGUIN, Texas —  Jessica Waninger-Saroni paced the St. Mary’s cross country team once again this weekend, leading the Rattlers to a fourth-place finish at the Texas Lutheran Cross Country Invitational.

Waninger-Saroni (Sr., Santa Claus, Ind.) finished eighth individually with a time of 19 minutes, 53.67 seconds, earning her second consecutive top-10 finish to begin the season.

Former Rattler tennis standout Angelique De Oliveira (Sr., Wattrelos, France) came in second on among Rattler players, finishing the 5,000-meter race in 21:26.33 to place 15th on Saturday. DeAnna Patterson (Sr., Converse, Texas) had a good race as well, finishing 17th in 21:41.72.

UTSA won the event with 15 points, while host Texas Lutheran finished second with 84 points. Concordia edged St. Mary’s for third place in the eight-team field, registering 87 points to the Rattlers’ 102.

UTSA’s Alyssa Diaz won the meet with a time of 18:41.24.

The St. Mary’s cross country team will be back in action Friday, when they run at the UTSA Ricardo Romo/Six Flags Fiesta Texas/H-E-B Classic in San Antonio. The event is set to get started at 5 p.m.

St. Mary’s University, as a Catholic Marianist University, fosters the formation of people in faith and educates leaders for the common good through community service, integrated liberal arts and professional education, and academic excellence. The University has six athletic national titles: men’s basketball (1989–NAIA), baseball (2001–NCAA Div. II), softball (1986–NAIA and 2002–NCAA Div. II) and an individual national champion in men’s golf (2006–NCAA Div. II) and a national academic championship in men’s golf (2009–NCAA Div. II). St. Mary’s also had more than 40 percent of its athletes named to conference, regional and/or national honor rolls this past year. St. Mary’s student–athletes graduation rate is 65 percent, higher than the NCAA Division II average of 55 percent. To learn more about St. Mary's, visit www.stmarytx.edu/athletics.