The Men’s team comes off of an eighth place performance at the MIAC Championships two weekends ago, while the Gustie Women took in a sixth place finish at the same meet. Both teams will head to Iowa to run in Saturday’s NCAA Central Region Championships.
“Since the beginning of the season, we’ve had our sights set on a strong showing at Regions,” Sophomore Kim Rostvold said, who turned in the team’s best Conference performance with a 20th place finish. “We were very satisfied [with our performance at Conference], and now we’ll look to improve on that this weekend.”
The men were hit hard by injuries this season, but they look to forget about that in Iowa and finish the season on a high note.
“Things haven’t gone as well as we’d hoped,” Senior John Kennedy said, who finished 35th in the MIAC field at the Conference meet. “The injuries got to us this year, but we’re really looking forward to Regions because we traditionally do well there.”
The Gustie Women have also had their fair share of hardships this season, but they have found the drive to push each other harder in order to finish the season strong.
Many Gustie runners have high hopes for Saturday’s meet, but the team will be content with a solid effort and an improvement in times.
“We all just want to have the best meet that we can,” Senior Vanessa Jones said, who placed 25th at the MIAC Championships. “Hopefully we’ll see some [personal records].”
The women have set high team goals as a result of a second half surge and successful showing at the Conference meet.
“We feel that we can be very competitive this weekend,” Rostvold said. “We’ve had some really strong performances at our last three races, and we’ll be going for a top ten performance at Regions.”
The Gustie men have their eyes set on passing the MIAC foes that beat them at the last meet and point out that a healthy Anders Bowman may provide the needed boost. Bowman, a sophomore, missed the Conference meet due to illness, but he will compete at Regions.
“We’ve passed teams that beat us at Conference [while competing at Regions] in the past,” Kennedy said. “We should have a healthy group at Regions, and having Anders back should help us a lot.”
The Gustie Women’s sixth place finish at the MIAC Championships was an improvement from last year’s seventh place performance, and the team is content with moving up in the standings.
“We were hoping for maybe fifth place, but sixth was pretty good,” Jones said. “It was better than last year, and we’re happy [with the finish] considering that our Conference is very competitive.”
Both teams have strong lead packs consisting of several runners that finish within a minute of each other, but lack a true front-runner like most teams.
“It is a strength as well as a weakness,” Kennedy said. “[It can be hard] when you don’t have some guys up front, but on the other hand, if you have a teammate there when you’re struggling, it helps out a lot.”
Both teams have a high cohesiveness, but they are not afraid to challenge each other and compete for one of the team’s seven available roster spots for championship meets.
“We work together really well, and our team is very competitive within ourselves,” Jones said. “We’re all pushing each other and vying for that top seven spot.”
On top of their struggles to stay healthy, the runners also had to adjust to their first new head coach in five seasons in Dale Bahr, who replaced Jed Friedrich at the beginning of the season. Brenden Huber remains the team’s assistant coach.
“It was a really positive change because both coaches are really involved, and both really care about the team,” Kennedy said. “They’ve done a good job recruiting new runners, and it’s good that they’re putting so much investment into the team’s future.”
The teams are still focusing on finishing this season on a positive note, but many can’t help but feel excited about the chances of next year’s team.
“We have some really good [first-years],” Jones said. “They spent most of the season getting used to the mileage, but next season they’ll do more damage.”
Despite the struggles of both teams at various points in the season, the Gustie runners see this season as a positive experience that will help bring success to the performance of next year’s squads.
“[At Conference] we had a few guys who really moved up in the group and dropped as much as a minute,” Kennedy said. “This season set up the future of the team and was a good stepping stone for years to come.”