just now realizing we forgot to recap this weekends Midwest Conference Championships - and what a weekend it was for us. Ill try to keep this as brief as possible, but theres a lot to cover. ::::deep breath::: two individual school records were taken down (one was ten years old...the other, was two weeks). Waffles was the highest finisher (8th) in school history - and the first top-10 finisher weve ever had. the mens program had its best finish in school history. we doubled the most all-conference (top 20) runners weve ever had in a weekend (weve had a combined three twice in our history, Saturday we had six - four men, two women and three others who were a COMBINED five places away: sophomore Andrea Lorch was 21st, froshie Cassie Lira was 22nd and sophomore Rocco DiMatteo was 23rd). last fall, our men were 7th in the MWC. a single point ahead of 8th place Beloit College. our #1 finisher, was then froshie, Mansur Waffles Soeleman, in 36th place (27:48 - a season PR and great race for him at that point). fast forward to Saturday - we placed 4 men in the top 20 (All-MWC): 8th (Waffles), 14th (Regassa), 15th (Derry), 18th (Stern) and again, Rocco DiMatteo - our #5 guy - was three spots out in 23rd. before Saturday, in the history of our 19-year-old cross country program, six LFC men have placed top 20 @ MWC all-time. two did it (Dan Hankosky - 15th, and Humberto Palmerin - 19th) in the same race a decade ago in 2004. weve never had three do it. Saturday...we put four there. nearly five. our 5th and final scorer (Rock, in 26:48) was a full american minute faster than Waffles team-leading time last fall at the same distance. what a difference a year makes. the best finish in school history prior to Saturday, was 5th of our eleven-team conference, which has happened only once before - twelve years ago - in 2002. Saturday our men were 3rd. just 13 points off of runner-up Carroll University, 24 points off of perennial power Grinnell College and a convincing 39 points in front of 4th place Lawrence University, who hosted the meet. finally, our mens scoreres, became the first, third, fourth, fifth and seventh fastest men in the HISTORY of our program. you read that correctly - five of the fastest seven men in our 19-year history are on THIS team. and theyre all underclassmen. in fact, our top nine on the day were. if this group sticks together, some big things are ahead. ____________ on the womens side Kristen Whitney (So.), Alexia Leonardo (Fr.), Andrea Lorch (So.) and Cassie Lira (Fr.) became the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th fastest runners in our programs 19-year history. again - all underclassmen. our womens program has had two-all conference women three times before (1996, 2005 and most recently, eight years ago in 2006), but last weekend we also had the first two runners NOT to make all-conference compliment them. four in the top 22. though our womens team stayed the same (5th last year, 5th this year) in the conference standings, it was a battle to do so after losing last years 1-2 punch from conference. Jenna Koerner (just a freshman last fall) and senior captain Victoria Baldacci were two big losses to a program that last fall went from dead last (11th) to 5th. this year we fought hard to maintain our spot, and Im proud that we were able to do so. assuming we retain the young group we have in place (we dont anticipate any departures this year), our ladies should be poised to contend for a top-3 spot soon as well. __________ okay, okay. kudos to those who took the time to read all of that. were very proud of the direction the program is heading - and thats only the top-end. there were countless other PRs that will be recognized in a much more proper setting at our end-of-the-season banquet. for now, our roster has slimmed down to eight a piece on each side as we have two more weeks of training heading into the NCAA Division III Midwest Regional Championships hosted by the University of Oshkosh (WI). before that though: were looking foward to our annual 3200 meter time trial against North Park University (Chicago) and pizza party this Friday! heres the official Go Foresters dot com article... goforesters/sports/xc/2014-15/releases/20141101xubyam
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 15:45:25 +0000
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