Nielson Earns Big West Cross Country Honor

Nielson Earns Big West Cross Country Honor

Senior finishes eighth at prestigious Minnesota meet

Utah State senior Mike Nielson was named the co-Big West Conference Cross Country athlete of the week it was announced Oct. 1. Nielson shared the honor with Sean Ricketts of Cal Poly.

The honor is the third league player of the week honor for a Utah State athlete this week as football player Ronald Tupea was named the Sun Belt Conference defensive player of the week and Nicole Feuz was the Big West Conference soccer player of the week.

Nielson posted an eighth-place finish out of 255 runners at the prestigious Minnesota Griak Invitational Sept. 27. Nielson covered the difficult 8,000-meter course in 24:31 to help lead Utah State to a 20th place finish among the 30 teams.

The Bellevue, Wash. product has been Utah State's top finisher in both meets he has compted in this year. He opened the season winning the Idaho State Invitational in a course-record time of 18:14 on Aug. 30. He then missed the BYU Autumn Classic due to a slight injury.

Nielson was also retroactively honored as the league's athlete of the week for his performance at Idaho State.

Ricketts led Cal Poly at the Stanford Invitational placing seventh out of 175 competitors. The Mustangs finished second as a team out of 22 schools.

The Aggies will take a break from running until they compete in the NCAA Pre-Nationals at Cedar Falls, Iowa, Oct. 18.