FRISCO, Texas – Continuing her reign of dominance during the 2025 season, sophomore
Elizabeth Khatevi of the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's cross country team was named the Southland Conference Women's Runner of the Week for the period of September 16-29, as announced by the league office on Tuesday afternoon.
With the win, Khatevi has now taken home three consecutive Women's Runner of the Week awards to open the season, pulling off a clean sweep thus far after also being honored on September 2 and September 16. She becomes the first cross country athlete in the Southland Conference to win three weekly honors in the same season since UIW's Griffin Neal did so on the men's side in 2023, and the first woman to accomplish the feat since Joy Gill also did so for the Cardinals in 2022. As for the Islanders, she joins Zoe Theriot of the soccer team last year and both Belle Morgan and Kyndal Payne of the volleyball team in 2023 as athletes to do so in any sport over the last four years.
Khatevi earned the award on the strength of her performance at the Gans Creek Classic in Missouri last week, where she finished first out of 236 competitors in the 6K Black race after crossing the line with a time of 19:58.8 that cleared second-place Evyn Humphrey of Tulsa by nearly 16 seconds. This marked Khatevi's third individual win of the season after also doing so at Cross Country at the Seashore on August 29 and the Gerald Richey UTA Invitational on September 5, her fourth win in a row dating back to last year's SLC Championships, and her fifth in total out of six races during her young career with the program.
Khatevi also helped lead the Islanders to an impressive showing as a team, as they finished in second place out of 27 total teams and came in behind only Stanford, who currently ranks fifth in the most recent USTFCCCA Division I National Coaches' Poll. The A&M-Corpus Christi women have now finished first or second as a team at all three meets this season, with Khatevi finishing as the unit's top placer at all of them.
"I am beyond proud of Elizabeth," Islanders head coach
Bryan Jackson said. "She is incredibly hard working and deserves all the accolades that come her way. I cannot wait to see how she continues to progress throughout the season."
Khatevi will now try for four in a row at the Islanders' next meet on October 17, when they travel to College Station to wrap up the regular season at the Arturo Barrios Invitational, hosted by Texas A&M.
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