Cal Poly’s Blake Swier (San Diego, CA) and UC Santa Barbara’s Lauren Christman (Santa Cruz, CA) were named the Big West Cross Country Male and Female Athlete of the Week after stellar performances helped their respective teams to impressive finishes at two prestigious meets.

Swier led the Mustangs to an upset of No. 2 Stanford at the Stanford Invitational, running a 23:59 on the 8K course to finish in fourth place overall out of 166 runners. The senior was only seven seconds behind the top individual finisher. Swier, who was an All-Region runner in 2002, redshirted last season. Cal Poly remained at No. 10 for the second straight week in the MONDO Men’s Division I Cross Country poll.

Christman propelled the Gauchos to a 3rd place finish out of 29 teams at the Roy Griak Invitational hosted by the University of Minnesota. She finished in 11th place with a time of 21:30 on the 6K course, besting the majority of a 273-woman field. Christman’s performance helped UC Santa Barbara beat out other nationally ranked teams such as Arkansas, West Virginia, Texas Tech, Penn State, Colorado State and Princeton. UCSB has risen to No. 14 in the latest Finish Lynx NCAA Division I Cross Country poll.