It was, as Hawai'i Pacific cross-country coach Christian Friis put it, "more than strange."

The Sea Warrior men's and women's teams turned in their finest performances in a decade at the NCAA II West Region Cross Country Championships, but not before the men's team endured a most unusual turn of events.

Roughly midway through the 10-kilometer race, about 70 runners were directed the wrong way on the winding, intersecting course on the UC San Diego Campus. When course marshals realized what had happened, the race was suspended and the entire field returned to the start.

The race was restarted from the beginning two hours later.

"It was a weird experience," Friis said. "I've been running for 22 years and I've never seen anything like it, so I wouldn't have known what to do. But it was similar to track races where you have to run twice in one day. It was OK because it was the same for everybody."

Regardless of the mishap, the men's team — undefeated against local competition in the past two regular seasons — finished an impressive sixth overall, led by freshman sensation Dany Malley and senior Jens Munk Nielsen. The HPU men finished 12th last year.

As a team, the Sea Warriors tallied 185 points, the best score of any HPU cross country team in its 10-year history.

HPU's women showed similar improvement, bounding from 20th overall last year to 11th this year.

Senior Emma Palmer and freshman Johanna Berggren paced the Sea Warriors, who finished with 338 points. Palmer placed 24th overall in the 6K race, the best finish for an HPU woman in three years. She placed 89th last year.

"I think the team as a whole stepped up," Friis said. "It's nice to have great individual runners, which we've had, but it's even better when you have a whole team that performs well."

MORE CROSS COUNTRY

BYUH'S WHITFORD ON TO DII NATIONAL MEET

Brigham Young-Hawai'i's Amanda Whitford placed seventh overall in the NCAA II West Region Cross Country Championships to advance to the NCAA II National Championships in Slippery Rock, Pa., on Nov. 22.

Whitford's performance help lift the Seasiders to a No. 7 finish in the meet, a significant improvement over their 17th-place performance last year.

WOMEN'S SOCCER

BYUH CLINCHES FIRST POSTSEASON BERTH

The BYUH women's soccer team is going to the NCAA Division II West Region tournament, thanks to an impressive final week of conference play.

The Seasiders clinched their first postseason berth in the three-year history of the program with a 2-1 win over eventual second-place Dixie State, a 2-0 win over Grand Canyon and a 2-0 victory over Notre Dame de Namur last week.

BYUH finished the regular season 10-2 in the PacWest, 14-4 overall.

This is the first year that the PacWest winner had an automatic bid to the tournament. BYUH, seeded No. 6, will face No. 3 UC San Diego Thursday. The winner will face tournament host and No. 2 seed Seattle Pacific for the right to advance to the next round.

MEN'S SOCCER

ARGOS CAPTURE TITLE WITH HAWAI'I SWEEP

The decimals-close race between Notre Dame de Namur and HPU for the PacWest men's soccer championship went down to the final week of the season with the Argos finally prevailing with a 3-0 sweep of Hawai'i schools.

In its final three games of the season, NDNU outscored UH-Hilo, Chaminade and BYUH by a combined 12-1.

Still, without an automatic bid to the NCAA II Regional tournament, the Argos had to hold their collective breath to see if their season would continue. Yesterday, they were awarded the No. 2 seed in the West and will play host Cal State Dominguez Hills on Nov. 17.

Unlike the women's tournament, the PacWest men's champion does not receive an automatic bid to the regionals.

WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL

BYUH WRAPS UP TITLE TO GO TO REGIONALS

The Seasiders volleyball team's 12-0 run in PacWest play sucked the drama out of the conference championship race weeks ago, but the final weekend of the regular season did provide at least one surprise.

Looking for a repeat of its 2006 undefeated regular season, BYUH was upended by middle-of-the-PacWest HPU last Thursday.

The Sea Warriors, who entered the match 6-6 in the conference (10-13 overall), dropped the first set 17-25 then roared back to take the next three 26-24, 25-28 and 25-21.

Then, two nights later, the Seasiders fell to their closest conference rival, UH-Hilo, in straight sets (25-11, 25-18, 25-21).

Regardless, the Seasiders (12-2, 21-7) still won the PacWest title handily and with it the conference's automatic berth to the NCAA Division II West Regional Volleyball Tournament, which begins Nov. 20.

The Vulcans had hoped their late-season run — they won eight of their last 10 matches — coupled with their emphatic win over BYUH would result in a second tournament bid for the conference. It didn't.