Gigi Maccagnini Leads USC Cross Country At UC Riverside Invitational

Freshman Gigi Maccagnini finished 24th to help lead the USC cross country team to a seventh-place finish among collegiate teams at the 40th annual UC Riverside Invitational (6K) held on the Agriculture Operations Course in Riverside, Calif. today (Sept. 18).  The seventh-place finish among the college teams was USC's highest at the UC Riverside Invitational since also taking seventh in 2016. The Trojans were second among the Pac-12 schools in the meet as conference power Arizona finished third and Arizona State came in ninth.

All of the Trojan runners, outside of senior Alyssa Brewer, were running their first career 6K race and the top five USC finishers crossed the line within a minute of each other.  Six of USC's seven runners today beat the time of the Trojans' top runner (Kamryn Weber) at this same meet in 2019.

"I'm proud of how our Trojans performed today," said USC cross country coach Jebreh Harris.  "The goal today was to stay together and keep that link strong as long as possible, and I'm proud of how we did that.  We had a good feeling of communicating and being around each other and are looking for a good, strong finish as we move forward toward the championships season.  I'm pretty excited about that."

For the second time in two meets Maccagnini led the Trojans, finishing 24th overall with a time of 21:09.4.  Fellow freshman Giovanna Pisano was the second Trojan finisher and she placed 35th with a time of 21.27.8.  Junior transfer Mihajla Milovanovic, in her first race for USC, was the third Trojan to cross the line, taking 40th with a time of 21:35.7.  Brewer was fourth among USC's runners and 50th overall with a personal-best 6K time of 21:48.7. The final Trojan runner directly figuring in the scoring was freshman Maya Lacamp who finished 66th overall with a time of 22:03.2.

The Trojans final two runners were junior transfer Janiah Brown who finished 99th with a time of 22.45.2 and freshman Ritika Singh was placed 103rd with a time of 22:50.2.

The Trojans will now have a long stretch of training and will return to competition right back here at the Ag/Ops Course in Riverside at the Highlander Invite (6K) on Oct. 16.