Oct. 21, 2009

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - North Dakota's Brittany Brenny and Houston Baptist's Daniel Martinez have been selected Great West Conference Runners of the Week. The awards were announced Wednesday by the conference office.

Brenny, a senior from Staples, Minn., finished 30th out of 267 runners to lead the Fighting Sioux to a 17th place finish at the Chile Pepper Festival last Saturday at Fayetteville, Ark. She posted a time of 21:47.78 in the 6K race which is the fourth fastest time in the Great West Conference this year at that distance. North Dakota finished ahead of such teams as LSU, Wyoming and Great West foe South Dakota which finished one spot behind the Sioux. Texas Tech won the meet, host Arkansas finished third, and other teams such as BYU, Missouri and Oklahoma State finished in the top 10.

On the men's side, Martinez finished second of 93 competitors at the Sam Houston Invitational on the way to his GWC honor. The defending Great West Conference Champion led the Huskies to a top finish as HBU defeated 11 other teams and won its first major men's meet since reestablishing the program in 2007. Other teams at the event included Texas A&M, Sam Houston, Louisiana-Lafayette and North Texas.

Other runners nominated for this week's honors were HBU's Raquel Tidwell, Nicholas Alvarado and Lauren Hammerle from Seattle, South Dakota's Rob Gregoire and Sigornie Pfefferle, Arturs Bareikis and Neshia Robertson from Chicago State and NJIT's Christian Baumbach.