Wanganui Collegiate old boy and New Zealand secondary schools cross country representative Christian Conder has seen great success with his University of North Florida team.
At Florida on an scholarship, Conder and his team won their cross country conference, which is the Atlantic Sun (ASUN) Championships, which is a NCAA Division I level conference for top schools in the south-eastern united states.
It was North Florida's second ASUN championship in the last three years, with the racing held on Saturday NZ time at the Van Cortlandt Park in New York.
As a sophomore student, Conder came 10th overall in 25m 44.1 to round out the scoring for his school team, who also picked up second, third, fourth and sixth place finishes from their runners.
"Christian Conder has finally acclimated to training in Jacksonville and has been able to handle the work this fall," said team coach Jeff Pigg.
"Again, it was nice to see him rewarded with a strong conference race."
North Florida's 25 points from their five best finishers won them the title ahead of Virginia's Liberty University, who finished runnerup with an accumulated 34 points.
Conder said the course was quite challenging, mostly run on loose gravel with lots of sharp hills and a number of very tight bends.
