Bowman, Lady Vols second at Stampede

Tennessee Lady Vol Sarah Bowman finished second in a cross country meet Saturday but at least her effort will count.

Bowman, the two-time All-SEC performer, finished behind former University of Georgia standout Jill Steffens on Saturday morning at Georgia's Bulldog Stampede in Athens, Ga.

Bowman covered the 5,000-meter course in a career-best, 17 minutes, 37.45 seconds (about three seconds behind Steffens) to finish first among collegiate runners and lead UT to a second-place finish with 64 points.

The race was added to Tennessee's schedule after last Friday's Tennessee Invitational did not count as a official race because of an insufficient number of other runners. Bowman won that race.

"We came here with the goal of finishing the race, staying healthy and moving on with our training,'' Lady Vols coach J.J. Clark said. "This wasn't on our schedule, but we had to replace the meet that didn't count last weekend to keep ourselves eligible for postseason NCAA competition. We were successful in doing that and we looked very good today actually."

Host Georgia looked better, however, bunching its five scoring runners from third to seventh place to win with 20 points. Auburn was third behind UT with 75 points.

Tennessee brought only the requisite five runners to the meet. Katie Van Horn finished 11th in 18:31.33 and freshman Brittany Sheffey was 15th (18:36.65). UT's other finishers were Rolanda Bell in 25th (19:35.36) and Phoebe Wright in 29th (19:51.69).

"Sarah is running well, and Katie and Brittany also looked good today,'' Clark said. "Sarah is running with a lot of confidence and she's running a lot easier than last year. It is great to see her coming into form."

The Lady Vols will run in their first 6,000-meter race Friday at Lehigh University's Paul Short Run in Bethlehem, Pa.