Every men’s cross-country runner who competed in the Greater Louisville Classic last Saturday achieved a personal record — a promising sign for a young team, according to assistant coach R.P. White.
“Just the rate of improvement was phenomenal across the board,” White said. “All seven guys who ran had personal bests, so that was really uplifting. It was really neat to watch.”
Hillsdale’s runners finished second of the 14 Division-II teams in their race, with their score of 70 team points just two points short of first-place Saginaw Valley State University.
Junior Nick Fiene took second overall in the Division II race with a time of 25:05.53. Senior captain Nathan Jones placed seventh with a time of 25:39.06. Freshman Mark Miller took 11th place and freshman Morgan Morrison took 24th, both earning points for the team.
Fiene attributed the team’s improvement to a mix of increased experience and execution of the coach’s strategy for the race.
“Our younger guys are learning a lot with each race that they run, so they’re a little bit more experienced now and we were glad we were able to perform as a team a lot better,” Fiene said.
Head cross country coach Andrew Towne said the Louisville race and next week’s race at Lewis University both include a number of competitive Division-II teams, which may bolster Hillsdale’s position down the road for national qualification.
“I thought they did a really good job last weekend competing with a lot of teams from our region,” Towne said. “I think we’re in as good a spot as we could hope for right now.”
According to White, learning from each individual race will help the team progress as young runners get additional races under their belts.
“After one good race, you can’t feel like you have it all figured out, but as long as you keep an open mind and are wanting to learn, apply, and execute another time, things are going to go well,” White said. “I think it fired them up more than anything.”