The Hillsdale College men’s and women’s cross-country teams opened the season this past weekend in East Lansing, Mich., where they competed in the Auto-Owners Insurance Spartan Invitational.
Over 300 runners competed in both the men’s and women’s races at the Sept. 14 meet, including athletes from several Big 10 schools and GLIAC rivals Grand Valley State University and Saginaw Valley State University. Team scores were not calculated for this meet.
Times for the entire field of runners were slow this year – the course was soft on account of rain the night before.
While the times were slower, especially for the women, who ran first, assistant coach R.P. White said both the Hillsdale men and women are running closer as a team than last year.
“Both the men and women, their spreads from one to five were vastly improved from the previous year,” White said.
Senior Victoria McCaffrey finished first for the women at 66th overall with a time of 22:52.
“I thought [the women] did really well,” said Andrew Towne, head women’s coach. “There are still things we need to improve upon and obviously continue to freshen up so we’re good to go when it matters, but it was a pretty good start.”
McCaffrey and freshmen Kristina Galat and Emily Oren ran together the first mile but then drifted apart in the middle of the race. By the end, the three were roughly 200-meters apart, “all kind of pulling each other” to finish the race, McCaffrey said.
Galat finished second for the team (78th, 22:57), followed by Oren (96th, 23:13), sophomore Amy Kerst (140th, 24:04), and sophomore Chelsea Kilgore (144th, 24:08).
McCaffrey said the team did well for the first race but also that the women need to close the gap between their third and fourth runners. Towne agreed, but also said the women are improving, noting the gap was shorter this week compared to last week’s Blue-White meet.
“I thought we did much better bringing that 3-4-5-6-7 closer to our 1-2-3,” Towne said.
The men’s team was led by sophomore Joshua Mirth. He said the Spartan Invitational provided the team a chance to find how it measures up at the beginning of the season.
“We’ll get better from this point, I think,” Mirth said. “Now that we know what we are doing.”
Mirth placed 18th overall, finishing with a time of 25:17. Fellow sophomores Matt Perkins (41st, 25:43) and Luke Hickman (75th, 26:09) followed. Freshman Paul Ausum (108th, 26:36) was fourth for the team and sophomore Jack Butler (149th, 27:11) was fifth.
In addition to the freshmen who had never run an 8000-meter race, four runners PR-ed for the men.
Jeff Forino, head men’s coach, said the team performed well. His main concern, like Towne’s, lies with the team’s second pack of runners, who are all vying for the fifth spot.
Starting with Butler, five Hillsdale runners finished within 19 seconds of each other.
“They’ve got to move [their pack] forward probably 45 seconds,” Forino said. “We need that fifth guy.”
In the middle of that pack was senior team captain Matt VanEgmond.
“Really we need a number five to step up right now,” VanEgmond said. “We had a big group right from our number five to our number nine. We need somebody to step up out of that group.”
This week will be the highest milage training week of the season for both men and women. Next week the coaches will lighten the training in preparation for the Sept. 28 meet at the University of Notre Dame.