SOUTH BEND, IN—The top 16 runners of the Baron and Lady Baron cross country team traveled to Notre Dame University to compete in the National Catholic Championship among 25 Division I, II, and III teams. Both men's and women's teams had several PRs and improvements from last year's meet, coming in fourteenth of 24 and eighteenth of 25 teams respectively.
"Today was a totally different environment from the past few weeks," head coach Dan Kuebler said. "They got used to running at the front of the pack at our first three meets, but at a meet where you have a bunch of DI and DII runners you have to run in a different way."
Junior Sydney Novak led the women's team, placing sixty-fifth out of 288 total runners in the women's 5k with a time of 20:12.
"It's a big challenge for the runners like Sydney, because in our smaller conference, she won our own home meet two weeks ago," women's coach Pia Crosby said. "She had to go through this new experience of suddenly being surrounded by DI and DII runners."
Kuebler said that the experience was one that will help Novak train for even higher achievements as the team moves into the second half of their season.
Making up the rest of the Lady Baron front pack were senior Allyson Huelseman, junior Colene Smith, and junior Kate Porter with times of 21:18, 21:36, and 21:44 respectively. Sophomore Leah Kaisler and Elise Zajicek followed close behind with 21:54 and 21:56.
Of the top six women runners, four achieved personal bests and the team as a whole moved up a few places from last year when they placed twenty-first out of 26.
It was a fast course with incredible competition," Crosby said, "But they did a good job, ran together, and helped each other, so we're full of expectations for the rest of the season."
The men's team was led by senior Patrick Flanagan who ran a 28:16 to finish seventy-ninth out of 273 total men competitors.
"This was Patrick's best performance at this meet in his four years at Franciscan," Kuebler said. "He ran a very solid race."
Flanagan was closely followed by freshman Graham Martin who ran a 28:36 to place eighty-ninth, freshman Tim Jackson who finished ninety-seventh with a 28:52, and junior John Redmond who ran a 29:08 to place one hundred and fifth. Both Martin and Jackson had personal records.
"The men ran a very tight pack again and were very strong, so we improved quite a bit as a team from last year," Kuebler said of the Barons who placed sixteenth of 22 schools in at Notre Dame in 2013.
He added that the experience helps the runners determine areas for improvement against quality competition.
"I think overall they all ran really well," Kuebler said. "It was a great experience for them to compete against all these other teams and it's something that they are going to learn from and always going to remember."
With one of the most challenging competitions of the season under their belts, the team looks forward to their next meet at Carnegie Mellon on October 11.
