Official Results
CLEVELAND, Tenn.–The Belhaven men's and women's cross country teams traveled out to Tennessee on Saturday night to take part in the Lee University Invitational.

With a handful of conference teams in attendance, the first race of the year was supposed to give the team a good look into where they stand in the conference for the 2012 season.

A mix of long travel, first-race jitters and a hard course led to a tough first race for the Blazers' runners.

Chloe Brown was the top runner on the women's side finishing 24th out of 39 runners with a time of 23:46.09. Sarah McCallister (23:56.28) finished two spots behind Brown. Sara Rivera (26:49.50) and Seraphine Lin (27:14.66) finished 36th and 37th respectively.

The team did not qualify for the team scoring due to only having four athletes compete. Lee took home the title thanks to an overall team score with 34 total points.

On the men's side, Thorburn McGee finished as the top Belhaven runner coming in 34th place with a time of 31:03.95. He was followed by freshmen Ben Storment (31:27.58) and Matthew Fox (31:48.28), who finished consecutively in 39th and 40th places. Drew Gardner (34:43.24) and Andrew Sinclair (35:04.25) crossed the line in 46th and 48th place respectively.

Belhaven finished in sixth place as a team scoring 167 total points. Conference opponent Emmanuel took home the top spot finishing with an impressive 23 points scored over five runners.

Course records were broken on both sides with Maggie Opelt winning the women's race and Dandra Smalley winning the men's race.  Neither runner was running with a collegiate team.

The Belhaven teams come home and look to rebound next Friday at the Mississippi College Season Opener at their home course Choctaw Trails in Clinton. That race begins at 5 PM on Friday night.