ST. LOUIS, Mo. — The Southeast Missouri men's and women's cross country teams opened the 2015 season Saturday with a pair of wins at the Gabby Reuveni Early Bird, hosted by Washington University in St. Louis. 

"We ran a plan today to pack run, run as a group. We were working on things to get ready for Vanderbilt in two weeks," said head coach Ryan Lane. "I think even though we graduated a lot from the women's team, we haven't skipped a beat with our newcomers coming in and working with our returners and it showed today. On the men's side, we had a good showing today. We're not deep but we have six or seven guys that are going to do work for us and that's all you need to be a team." 

The women ran a 4K race while the men ran a 6K. 

Kaitlyn Shea was the top finisher for the women with a third-place finish while Marc Maton won the men's race. In all, Southeast posted seven top-ten finishes: four for the men, three for the women. 

Shea led the women's team and placed third in 15:04. Shea was followed by Megan Parks (15:06) in sixth place and Angela Sumner (15:09) in seventh. Sydney O'Brien picked up a 12th-place finish in 15:36, rounding out the top four for the Redhawks. Natalie Kopplin (15:48) and Celine Rone (15:55) finished back-to-back in 19th and 20th, respectively. Lindsey Seabaugh (16:02) and Rachel Hutchcraft (16:03) also finished back-to-back in 23rd and 24th-places. Andrea George finished 31st in 16:15, Eilish Overby finished 40th in 16:36, Madeline Gaul finished 76th with a time of 19:48, and Kennedy Roderick finished 87th in 20:22. 

"I was excited to see how close our four, five, six, and seven were to our top three in the women's race because I thought the gap was bigger. We proved today that we are a much more deep team than I thought and that's excellent for team scoring."

The men had an impressive showing with all eight runners finishing in the top half. Maton won the race quite handedly in 19:48, 13 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. Shane Brown placed fourth in 20:14 while Dan Plunkett (20:25) and Jaime Zarate (20:27) finished sixth and seventh to round out the top ten for the Redhawks. Jace Mortimer finished in 20:47, good for 12th place. Andrew Whitener took 15th place in 20:52. James Kosbar (27th, 21:20) and Curtis Reed (34th, 21:42) finished the race for Southeast. 

"We had a couple upperclassmen and one freshman step up and have better than expected days. That's going to help us make sure we have a contingency plan incase someone has a down day or is sick and someone can step up and take that spot.

"It was a good day to get out and break the rust off," Lane remarked. 

The Redhawks compete next at the Commodore Classic, hosted by Vanderbilt, Sept. 19.