By Jeremiah Griffin |Sports writerThe Augusta University cross country teams both took first place Oct. 18 in the Garden City Dual meet against Paine College and USC Aiken, their local rivals, adding another tally to the win column on their way to conference championships.For the women, Micah Weathers shined with a 14 minutes, 36:3 seconds in the 4-kilometer race at Lake Olmstead to take first place, beating out the second-place finisher by more than a minute. The Jags held the top three overall spots with Weathers, Miranda Taylor and McKenzie Knudsen, respectively, and had runners place fifth, seventh, eighth and ninth.The AU men completely dominated their 6.2K with Chase Kennedy finishing first overall at 21:37:1. Thibault Maillot, Hunter Kimball and Jacob Burgamy rounded out the top four, all finishing within seconds of each other.Overall, the Jags dominated in what was considered by AU Coach Adam Ward to be a tune-up for the conference meet.“Even though we ran harder than we needed to, they still said it felt pretty controlled, which means we accomplished what we needed to,” Ward said.The meet was one that Ward and company did not expect to have to do. When the NCAA did not accept the Pfeiffer Duals Exhibition on Aug. 30 as a qualifier for nationals, Ward and AU had to scramble to assemble this meet with its local rivals to satisfy the NCAA.“We went back and forth with the NCAA on [the rule], but they weren’t willing to budge on that,” Ward said. “There’s nothing in the Pre-Championships Manual or the At Large Qualification Manual that suggests they wouldn’t use that date for the number of meets we needed to get in. It’s just more of their personal preference of what they want to see teams do.”Looking forward to the Peach Belt Conference Championships, Ward is confident that his teams will compete.“We’ve got a game plan in place that we hope will allow us to win without putting all our cards out there necessarily,” Ward said. “They know what they’ve got to do and what’s at stake here.”The Jags will be put to the test in the Peach Belt Conference Championships on Saturday, Oct. 26, at Pembroke, N.C. Contact Jeremiah Griffin at JEGRIFFIN@augusta.edu.