Washington University head cross-country coach Jeff Stiles couldn’t hide his excitement after Saturday’s University Athletic Association (UAA) championship meet.

“It was unbelievable; it was incredible,” Stiles gushed. “It was what cross-country is intended to be. If they had cross-country in heaven, this is what it would be.”

Mary Richardson | Student Life

Members of the Wash. U. women’s cross country team compete during last year’s UAA championships in Forest Park. This weekend, the women’s team repeated its first place UAA championship victory in Boston.

Stiles was talking about the “heavenly” weather at the course in Boston—partly cloudy with high of 53—but given his enthusiasm for the Bears’ performances on Saturday, he might as well have been talking about his runners’ results.

The women’s team added a conference title to Wash. U.’s UAA-best total—its 14th overall and 10th since 2002—with a dominant victory, while the men battled to a second-place finish despite two of their top runners not racing due to injury.

The day started with a coronation for the women, who outpaced the field en route to a landslide win for the second consecutive year: The Bears totaled 35 points for a whopping 50-point margin over runner-up University of Rochester.

Freshman Ellie Degen, sophomore Alison Lindsay and senior Ellen Toennies finished third through fifth, respectively, and were joined near the front of the pack by junior Sarah Curci (ninth) and sophomore Anna Maurer (14th).

Maurer, the Bears’ fifth finisher, beat every other team’s No. 3 runner, and the Bears’ seventh finisher beat every other team’s No. 5 runner.

“We said our goal was to have four in the top 10 and our fifth in the top 15, and we did exactly that,” Stiles said.

“We were able to set up our race plan really well,” Toennies added. “It had a few hilly sections and a few sections back in the woods that you really had to show mental toughness and persevere through.”

Winning with depth was a new look for the Bears, who had in the past relied on a more top-heavy approach for their conference titles. Since 2011, Wash. U. had won four straight individual titles on the women’s side, the last three coming from 2015 graduate Lucy Cheadle.

Toennies acknowledged that the team knew coming into this season that they’d have to adjust to more of a pack mentality.

“Rather than having one girl who was going to blow everyone else away, we were going to have to focus on the strength we had in the middle section,” she said. “We race well as a pack, because we train as a pack and we’re used to running together.”

The success of that pack performance on Saturday might portend further postseason accolades for the Bears. The last three times the women won the UAA, they followed that conference title up with a top-five finish at nationals—including the program’s lone national title in 2011.

Between the team’s UAA title and its victory at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh AAE Invitational two weeks ago, Stiles said he thinks the team is rounding into top form at just the right time and should contend for the title at nationals.

“There’s probably like four to five really good teams, and I think we’re one of them,” he said.

The outlook wasn’t as encouraging for the men’s team, which placed just one runner in the top 10 on Saturday and finished 15 points shy of Carnegie Mellon University’s total (53-68).

The second-place score signified an end to Wash. U.’s five-year UAA title streak, but Stiles said he was impressed with the team’s resolve with its top, junior Ryan Becker, and third-fastest, junior Dillon Williams, runners being held out of the meet.

“We didn’t win, but we executed really well,” Stile said. “Honestly, with what Carnegie did today and what we had running, I think we kind of maximized our points.”

Stiles added that he’s optimistic that Becker and Williams will return to race form by the regionals meet in two weeks.

Without Becker, who has won two invitationals this season, senior Josh Clark stepped into the lead runner role and raced to the individual title, finishing the 8-kilometer course in 24:56 to win by six seconds.

Clark’s title marked the fifth in six years for a Wash. U. runner, and he garnered first-team All-UAA honors for the second season in a row after finishing fourth overall last year.

Beyond Clark, Stiles applauded the performances of sophomore David O’Gara (12th) and junior Ben Rosenkranz (13th), who posted career-best times to earn second-team All-UAA honors, and seniors Alex Goldberg (20th) and Adam Streicher (22nd), who ran well as they recover from lingering injury issues.

Those runners “really graduated to that next level,” Stiles said. “It’s what we need looking toward nationals.”

But before the team can run at nationals, it must first qualify. The Bears race next at the NCAA Midwest Regional in two weeks in Rock Island, Ill.