SOUTH BEND, IND.- The Franciscan University men and women's cross country teams traveled to compete in the National Catholic Championships, coming in 16 out of 22 and 21 out of 26 respectively in the small school division.

A usually fast course, slowed down by wetness and mud from the week's rain, led to a moderately paced race for both men and women. This was the first fast course of the season for the Barons, which brought in multiple individual PRs.

Sophomore John Redmond and junior Allison Huelselman stood out among the many successful runs today for Franciscan.

"John Redmond came in second of our runners for the guys today," head coach Dan Kuebler said. "He had one of his best races at his time here at Franciscan with a 28.59. Allison Huelseman was our second woman and she ran a 21.40 and that was one of the best races she ever had."

The Baron's placement in the day's meet does not accurately portray how they performed at the National Catholic Championships this year. FUS had not seen most of the teams in their division yet this season, so they did not know what to expect in the competition.

We ran against St. Bonaventure a couple weeks ago and they are a Division I team," Kuebler said. "We did better against St. Bonaventure today than we did two weeks ago so it is nice to see that we are making progress against other teams. It is kind of the best way to measure ourselves because we haven't run against a lot of these teams yet this season."

These challenging meets against scholarship runners are setting Franciscan up to dominate towards the height of their season. Kuebler said that he is confident that his team will stand up well against the competition once they begin to race other Division III schools.

"We are actually going to be racing against a lot of the same teams we ran against in the first week of the season and a lot of Division III competition for a change," Kuebler said. "It will give us a better gauge of where we are. We made a lot of progress in the past couple of weeks."

Kuebler plans to keep tightening up the top seven runners for both the men's and women's sides as the continue to train for the rest of the season. There are still some gaps with underclassmen adjusting to college racing, but he is sure they will be up for the meets approaching.

The Barons will run next in Pittsburgh on September 28 at the Chatham University Invitational.