Ally Kuzma leads the women’s race
Courtesy | Sarah Chappelle
The men’s and women’s cross country teams both placed second overall at the season’s first meet at Hayden Park Sept. 5.
Sophomore Ally Kuzma and senior Gabe Phillips both took first place individually in their respective races. On Sept. 8, Kuzma was subsequently announced as the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Week.
“The first taste of competition is always intriguing,” head coach R.P. White said. “It’s always exciting to kick things off on our course and to be out in front of the home crowd. This experience let us identify where we could be better and then also highlighted our strengths.”
On the men’s side, junior Gabe Phillips took first place in a four-mile race, finishing in 20:10.03. Second for the Chargers was junior Caleb Youngstedt, placing ninth overall in 21:13.7. Freshman John Richardson executed his first collegiate debut, finishing 10th in 21:20.9. The final two scoring runners were sophomore Zach Self, who took 11th in 21:24.4, and senior Nathaniel Osborne with a 13th place finish in 21:25.9.
“It was more of a controlled atmosphere where coach gave us paces to hit, and we had to hit those paces, and then we could really race the last bit,” Philips said. “It’s a challenging course, and I think the team handled that well.”
On the women’s side, sophomore Kuzma took first place in the 5k race with a time of 18:20.3, and beat the runner-up by 50 seconds, and according to White, achieved the strategy they hoped.
“We had a race plan going into the start that was a little conservative, and then just kind of seeing how I felt from there, and I felt pretty good,” Kuzma said. “It was a lot of fun to start racing again.”
Behind Kuzma, junior Savannah Fraley came in second for the Chargers finishing in eighth place with 19:53.8, immediately followed by junior Eleanor Clark coming in at 19:54.9. Two freshmen rounded out the scoring runners with Grace Tykocki placing 16th in 20:23.0 and Caroline Roberts placing 19th in 20:47.9.
“Obviously we are all driven,but we’re all driven together,” Kuzma said.
Following this home opener, the Chargers plan to enter a slightly different scene at the upcoming Michigan State University Spartan Invitational in East Lansing Sept. 12.
“The idea is to put ourselves in a hyper-competitive environment at a really large stage,” White said. “That experience will be something that will help us during championship season.”
