The Gustavus Women’s Cross Country team posted a strong showing in a difficult field of teams at the Tori Neubauer Invite on Oct. 17. The Invite, hosted by the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, consisted of 27 teams with Gustavus finishing 14th.

In a field of over 400 runners, seven Gustie women finished in the top 200, led by Sophomore Kim Rostvold, who placed 71st. “[The meet] went really well because the majority of the girls on our team had personal records,” Junior Abby Karl said. “The girls finally did well as a team and we beat a lot of conference teams that we’ve been hoping to beat.”

In a difficult field including the University of Minnesota, UW-Eau Claire and UW-La Crosse, eight MIAC teams also participated.Gustavus defeated six of them in the team results, which  include the top seven runners from each school.

Despite running track her first two years at Gustavus, this is the first year Karl has run cross country. She posted one of her best finishes of the year by finishing 7th for Gustavus. “I haven’t been doing that well until this last meet because this is my first year running cross country,” Karl said. “I didn’t know what to expect. [In this last race] I think I finally understood the strategy used to run a cross country race.”
The Gustavus Women’s Cross Country team has a week off until they travel to St. Paul for the MIAC Championships and hope to finish the season off strong.