Cross-Country teams place 9th (men’s) and 14th (women’s) in the 35-team field event
Alastair Brown
This past Saturday, the Lakehead University Cross-Country teams competed at the 24th annual Roy Griak Invitational in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The meet is perennially one of the top collegiate races in North-America and this year was no exception, with thousands of competitors spanning the three divisions.
Nonetheless, the Thunderwolves were up to the challenge, and the men and women collectively recorded one of their best performances at the meet.
First on the clock was the Women’s DIII race, where fourth-year runner Tafline Tong led the Wolves’ charge, completing the six-kilometer course in 24:15, placing her 54th out of 500 competitors.
Joining her in the top 100 are 3rd year athlete, Tess Naroski (62nd–24:22), and second-year runner, Hilary Quirion (95th–24:43). Rounding out the scorers for Lakehead were third-years, Lisa Alaimo and Kaylie Iserhoff, who placed 114th and 124th respectively. Their total of 410 points placed them 14th in the 35-team race, which was won by University of Wisconsin-La Crosse who tallied 98 points.
An hour later, the men found themselves out on the line, being led by veteran 5th-year Swedish import, Jonas Holmberg, and homegrown rookie, Andrew Nixon.
Nixon came through in his second collegiate race, placing 15th overall in a time of 26:22 for the eight-kilometer course. The performance was good enough for second among all fresh-man, yet a tad behind Wisconsin-La Crosse’s Zach Wilhelmy, who won the DIII race in a time of 25:27.
Following Nixon –for the Wolves– were Holmberg and second-year Alastair Brown, who both managed to secure solid top-50 performances. Holmberg placed 30th in a time of 26:53, and Brown just squeaked in with a 47th place finish with a time of 27:06. Rounding out Lakehead’s top five scorers were 5th-year captain Dave Witiluk and 1st-year Kinesiology student Chris Brown, who placed 126th and 136th respectively.
In all, the top five tallied 323 points, which placed them 9th out of 35 teams, good enough for Lakehead’s first ever top-10 finish at Griak. UW-La Crosse won the Men’s Maroon DIII title in a dominating fashion with 48 points.
Coach Kip Sigsworth was very proud of the team’s efforts.
“Both teams ran very well. We were a bit banged up heading into this race but the athletes did what they need to do and stepped up to very high level of competition. We still have a lot of work to do but this is where we hoped to be at this time of the year. One the men’s side I was very happy with our top three and we need to close up the gap to 4 and 5. The women actually surprised me a bit, in a good way, by easily exceeding my goal of a top half finish. I especially thought that Tafline, Tess, and Kaylie had good runs.”
The next race on tap for the Thunderwolves is the Queen’s Invitational three weeks from now in Kingston, Ontario, where Lakehead will race against OUA schools for the first time this year.