The Hillsdale College men’s cross-country team finished first and the women’s team second in the Michigan Intercollegiate Championships meet on Oct. 9, bringing the Chargers’ regular season campaign to a close.
While the women placed second in the meet, they finish the season ranked No. 1 in the NCAA Division II coaches poll for the fourth week in a row.
The women’s race included five teams and 40 athletes, while the men’s race was even smaller with only three teams and 29 athletes. Even though the race didn’t have big competition, it was still an important race for a number of runners “on the bubble,” who are unsure of whether or not they will make the GLIAC conference team.
“We went in and got accomplished what we wanted to from the meet,” head distance coach Joe Lynn said.
Lynn had a number of different race plans for the team, with race plans even differing within the men’s and women’s squads. Many of the athletes on the bubble treated the meet like a regular race, while the top men and women ran it as more of a hard workout, either practicing racing strategy or pacing teammates.
“You put yourself in different situations so that, come championship season, if you get out too fast or you get out too slow or something’s not perfect, it’s not a new situation for us,” Lynn said.
On the men’s side, Lynn was proud of the “high level” at which they raced even though Intercollegiates wasn’t a typical meet.
Junior Luke Daigneault agreed.
“I think it was a step in the right direction,” Daigneault said. “We still have some things that we’re rounding out in our training. It’s definitely not a move backwards.”
According to Daigneault, who finished fourth overall in the race, the meet was low-key, but still a nice victory. Although cross-country is often thought of as an individual sport, the men ran as a team.
“We were really tight as a group honestly,” Daigneault said. “It really goes into the thing we were trying to do, and that’s racing in the hills, because that’s what we have to do at conference.”
Although results are somewhat misleading because not all of the men were giving full race effort, the team’s gap from first to seventh place was much smaller than it has been in past weeks — only 53 seconds.
Freshman Santiago Quintana, one of the runners on the bubble, had a breakout race, running a personal best 8K time and placing seventh on the team. Quintana said he looks up to junior captain Joe Newcomb for inspiration on what it means to be an elite runner.
Despite the team’s improvement, Daigneault said the race’s results don’t guarantee success later in the season.
“Our team still has a lot of work if we think we have any chance at being top five at the regional meet,” he said.
On the women’s side, Lynn called the race “quality,” even though it wasn’t a typical meet.
Junior Meredith Didier was another bubble athlete who gave full effort in hopes of making it on the team’s GLIAC conference squad.
“I know I took my cross-training really seriously, so I was prepared,” Didier said after her first race back from a minor injury. “I was just surprised how fast I was going through the race, and who I was running with on my team.”
Like the men, the women’s race results don’t necessarily reflect a normal race. Still, the women shrank their gap between first and seventh place to 1:07 at Intercollegiates.
In the two weeks between the Michigan Intercollegiate Championships and the GLIAC Championships, the team has been intensifying its training in preparation for not only the conference meet on Saturday but for the rest of championship season.
Lynn has high hopes for his team at the conference meet, and believes that the women can win and the men can place in the top four or five teams.
The meet will take place in Kensington Metropark in Milford, Michigan, about one and a half hours northeast of Hillsdale.
