The meets that count are still more than a month down the road.

The Gator cross country teams are testing themselves and finding that they’re on the right path.

Both teams traveled to Portland, Ore. this past weekend to compete in the University of Portland Invitational in Pier Park on Sept. 12.

The women finished only five points behind West Oregon University, which is ranked sixth in the region in Division II.

The SF State’s women cross country team is ranked 10th in the region and the men’s team finished a little over a minute behind West Oregon, who is ranked fifth in the region in DII.

“It was a pretty cool run,” said junior Dan Napieralski, who ran the men’s 8-kilometer race and was the second Gator to cross the finish line, finishing in 32nd overall with a time of 27 minutes, 21.08 seconds.

Napieralski said the course was more difficult than expected because it was a loop of four 2K circuits with rolling hills.

The men finished in eighth place out of the 13 teams competing with a score of 192 points.

The women placed fourth out of 11 teams with 31 points in their first 6k race of the season.

In cross country, the lower the score the better. The monitoring of the progress that has been made so far and how prepared they are leading into the conference meet.

In some ways that’s the most important thing to them,” said assistant coach Pete Cushman.

“They want to make sure they’re on the way up.”

“It was hotter then we were expecting and that makes for tougher conditions,” said coach Tom Lyons.

The temperature in Portland on race day was 82 degrees, according to the Weather Channel Web site.

This race was even better preparation for the teams since it allowed them to see how they perform in hotter weather.

SF State head coach Tom Lyons said running in the heat is more difficult because the body has to “fight to keep cool.”

Running in cold weather is a bit easier because of how the body naturally heats up.

Weather may play a somewhat important role for meets that really count.

“Conference is in San Bernardino, Regionals is in San Diego, and then Nationals is in Slippery Rock Pa., so we could be going from San Diego to snow,” said Lyons.

For the SF State’s women’s team, Anna Bretan finished fourth with a time of 23:00.67.

Sophomore Tanya Ferriera placed 13th with a time of 23:50.29.

Senior Vera Ross placed 26th with a time of 24:49.92. Freshman Rachel Harrington placed 31st with a time of 25:00.02.

Freshman Kirsten Jackson placed 34th with a time of 25:03.02, and freshman Madison Bencomo placed 40th with a time of 25:22.78.

For the men, senior Jason Karbelk finished 20th with a time of 26:43.99, and sophomore Kyle Fujitsubo finished third for the Gators who placed 39th overall with a time of 27:35.13.

SF State had seven male runners overall, but these were the only times given on a record of the results obtained by the [X]press.