Kennesaw State junior Mackenzie Howe was named the Atlantic Sun Conference Women’s Runner of the Week on Wednesday, following her fifth win in five races this season at the Walt Disney World Cross Country Classic on Saturday.
The Health and Exercise Science major ran the 5k course at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in 18:07.60, to beat out Sara Trane of Florida Tech by 1.8 seconds. Howe was one of three Owls to finish in the top-20 on their way to the team’s third victory in five races this season. It was yet another solid performance at Disney for Howe, who had finished fourth and seventh in 2008 and 2007, respectively.
This was the fifth time in 2009 that Howe has been named the A-Sun Women’s ROTW. Her nine career ROTW recognitions is the most of any runner in A-Sun history. Howe is proud of her accomplishments, but knows that cross country is a team sport.
“I’m always excited to hear that im the Runner of the Week, but the real prize will be if we can win the conference title as a team,” Howe said.
“All these awards are nice but they don’t measure up to a conference title. I’m hoping to continue to do
what I’m doing and I’m training as hard as I can so that I’m running better than ever come October 31.”
The Owls will not race this week, but will be back in competition on October 23 when they host the KSU Owl Invitational at Noonday Park in Kennesaw. It will be the last meet for the Black and Gold before the Atlantic Sun Conference Championships, which is hosted by Stetson in DeLand, Fla., on Halloween.
