Imagine running 75 miles per week on average, this season the Gustavus Men’s Cross Country team is doing just that.
Junior Paul Nordquist transferred to Gustavus after his first year in college and has played a huge role in shaping the Men’s Cross Country team. At the first event of the year, the Alumni meet, Nordquist finished first in the 5K with a time of 16:28.3, leading the men’s team to their first victory against the Alumni since 2009.
“I’ve been running cross country since I was in eighth grade and started because I was too small to play football and not coordinated enough for soccer, so cross country seemed like a good choice,” Nordquist said.
It wasn’t until coming to Gustavus that Nordquist truly fell in love with the sport. He found a sense of community and strong chemistry within the team.
“When he transferred here, he started loving running like he never had before. He’s working his tail off. Coming out of high school, he wasn’t an extraordinary athlete, but he’s put in the mileage, he’s found some motivation and he believes he can do it. He went from an average runner to an amazing collegiate runner. It’s guys like Paul who help our younger guys believe they can do it too,” Coach Dale Bahr said.
One important attitude Coach Bahr applies to the team is persevering and believing one can do anything. This kind of philosophy implemented in a team makes a very successful season.
“Our team is working together really well this year, everyone on the team seems to be fully committed and training hard and smart,” Nordquist said.
Collectively, the young team has shown a lot of promise in leadership which has highly impressed the coaches. The team works well in encouraging one another.
“We do our best coaching by sitting back and watching; we’re trying not to over coach. It’s fun to watch them have the success that they are reaching, it’s pretty phenomenal,” Coach Bahr said.
The Men’s Cross Country team finished first in the Alumni meet, they finished first at University of Wisconsin River Falls, but unfortunately finished 8th at the Saint Olaf invite.
“Some of our guys didn’t run as best they could have, and that exposed us for being inexperienced. We reflected on it, but we’ve got out sights set out on this weekend to do well,” Coach Bahr said.
Although they did not compete well at St. Olaf, they ran towards first place at the Carleton meet on Oct. 4.
Junior Thomas Knobbe finished in third, Nordquist finished fourth, and Junior Evan Jones finished in fifth. Carleton continued to stay consistent with them, finishing only 2 points away. Gustavus won with a score of 40, and Carleton at 42.
Knobbe has had a strong season so far as well, last season he was leading the team. He finally had a come up this past weekend with a time of 25:40.7.
The Men’s Cross Country team will be racing at University of La Crosse next weekend, Oct. 17.
With a time of 25:58.0, Junior Evan Jones helped the Gusties to the win at Carleton. With him being third out of the Gustavus runners and fifth overall, Jones only let five points go towards the overall 40. “Carleton’s meet went really well. We had three of the top 10 teams in the region at a pretty small meet, so we were able to get an incredibly personal look at teams that will be vying for national contention. Topping Carleton isn’t an easy task, so to come out of that meet with a win is huge.
Carston Dammann and I tried out different racing tactics and it paid off well for us. We came away from the meet knowing that we need to close the gap between our 4th and 5th runners, which shouldn’t be too tall of a task since Marcus Speca can come up in the clutch during championship season like the best of them,” said Jones.