The suspense was over a little earlier for Western's cross country teams- and their opponents - at Thursday's 41st Northwestern Combinational.

The Panthers claimed both the boys and girls combinational championships with strong performances throughout their lineups on the three kilometer course.

The boys finished first with a combined time of 51 minutes, 17 seconds with Pioneer second at 53:08. Carroll, the defending champion, was third at 53:52.

Western's girls winning time was 65:11 while the host Tigers were next at 70:07. The Cougars were third in 71:05. The victory was the Panthers' second ever at Northwestern and broke a four year streak by Pioneer.

Last year, the results of the meet weren't known until the awards were handed out. Just 48 seconds separated Carroll from Western in the boys race and the Western girls finished a mere 27 seconds behind Pioneer.

Thursday, everyone knew who had won the meet by the time the races for the 1-2 runners were finished.

Seniors Kyle Walsh and Jim Jackson finished 1-2 in the race for the top runners, but they merely sealed what had already been top-notch racing by their Panther teammates. Michael Marley and Andy Snow · gave Western a 2-5 finish in the race for the 3-4 runners, following the 1-2 plating of Luke Minor and Eric Walsh in the competition for 5-6-7 runners. For good measure, Josh Sheperd followed them in sixth.

"We knew that the 3-4 race would be crucial for us," Panther coach Dana Neer said. "Michael ran second and we were hoping he'd be first or second. Andy finished fifth in his first race, I was concerned he'd be able to keep up to the pace, but he finished very strong.

"In the 5-6-2 Luke and Eric realized that it had a very quick pace, but they didn't get sucked in. By three-quarters of a mile they were with the leaders and they had the lead after that."

Thursday, with its starting time temperature of 95° and sti­fling humidity, wasn't conducive to fast times, but Walsh managed once again to run the fifth fastest time in the meet's history at 9:33, one sec­ond faster than his winning time in 2002. Jackson was second at 9:44, putting him among the top 20 times in the meet's history.

"To have two runners of that caliber is great. Jim is a great competi­tor but he's a supporter of Kyte and Kyle is a supporter of Jim," Neer said. "Their support and camaraderie is very strong."

Laura Boltz, after finishing sec­ond in the girls race last year, was, the individual winner in 11:58 for Eastern. The Comet senior was just the ninth girl to break 12 minutes in the meet.

"Laura obviously put the miles in and had a great summer," Neer said.

The domination of the Panthers' girls, however, was even more im­pressive than the boys.

Cassie Myer led a first-through-fourth sweep in the 5-6-7 race with Megan Clearwaters, Vanessa Lorenz and Liz Hoppes following her. Anna Hurlock and Becky Elliott came next in the 3-4 race and took first and second.

"That was great to see because it took the Suspense out of it," Neer said.

Anina Gruber followed Boltz in second and Brittany Stallhorn, who's been battling illness, took sixth. Hurlock, a freshman, was just a second behind Gruber's time of 12:41.

"Brittany was sick all week, but she still came and ran even though she was not feeling her best. She still wanted to run and that's great leadership" Neer said. "We have a lot of young girls vying for that sev­enth varsity spot. Liz and Whitney Rittmann look like people who will help us at the varsity level and Vanessa has cut four or five min­utes off her best 5K time.

Northwestern was topped by the 13:02 time of Katie McCool andthe Tigers benefited from a strong race by Lauren Sewell in her first varsity race.

"I'm happy. For where we're at in the season, the efforts were very good," NW coach Pete Schroer said. "This was a big change. Many of the girls in the mix were running varsity for the first time. If we continue to keep every­one healthy and get in shape, that bodes well for us."