SALEM, Va. (Oct. 18, 2025) - The Bowers Blitz continues unabated. 

Jason Bowers pulled away in the second half of the men's 8k at the 2025 South Region Showdown on Saturday to pace the ETSU men's cross country team in their first team win of 2025. His 23:19.2 is nine seconds shy of the school record he set in 2023 and won Saturday's race by 49 seconds over unattached runner Jack Cottrell. 

Bowers, the #19 runner in FloTrack's most recent national rankings, was eighth at the first kilometer split but rose to second place by the end of the second. He took the lead from Duke's Dawson Reeves at the 3k split and was neck-and-neck with Cottrell with four tenths of a second separating the two at the halfway mark. Bowers opened the gap with a 2:51.8 fifth kilometer, by far the fastest mark in the field, and followed that up with a 2:53.6 in the sixth while no one else in the field reached the 6k split in under three minutes. He disappeared over the horizon in the home stretch, finishing the final two kilometers in a blistering 5:44.2. 

Bowers was not alone in having a successful day for the Bucs. Chance Underwood posted his second top 10 finish of 2025 with a 24:43.5 that put him sixth in the final running order, his highest finish of the year. Freshman Garrett Hawkins came home 14th at 25:19.1 for his third top 20 finish of 2025 and ran as high as eighth during the race. Nate Hillis and William Hartig rounded out the scoring entries for the Bucs with season best times of 25:32.6 and 25:35.2, respectively, finishing 18th and 19th. 

ETSU finished the race with 34 points, ahead of second-place Pfeiffer's 65. Only ETSU and Duke had multiple runners in the top 10. 

The South Region Showdown was ETSU's final event before the 2025 SoCon Cross Country Championships in Mill Springs, NC, on November 1.

For more information on ETSU cross country, go to ETSUBucs.com.