This past weekend, the NMU cross-country team finished 15th out of 33 teams at the Lewis Crossover meet in Romeoville, Illinois. Second-year student Madi Szymanski led the pack, finishing 13th overall with a time of 21:36.3.
“Definitely was a good performance on our best of the year … they didn’t get tripped up and ran a smart race, adjusted a little bit on how we went out. So, it was a really, really good performance,” Head Coach Jenny Ryan said.
The cross-country team is made up of mostly younger runners with the majority being freshman and sophomores. One of the returning sophomores was Gianna Hoving, who is coming off an injury and raced for the first time this season. Hoving was one of the nine members of the team to set her personal best at the event, coming off the course running a 23:26.0.
“She was one of our tops ones last year and she had a knee thing all summer and all fall so that was her first,” Ryan said. “She’s barely been running at all and very little mileage … we knew she’d be a little bit back from where she has the capability to be, but she was farther up than we thought it would be. So [we’re] super happy with that because she definitely is also on the way up so she should move up in the next couple meets.”
Looking ahead to the upcoming meet, some members of the team will be resting for the postseason leaving only 12 members to race one final time.
“It’ll be a good experience for the other freshmen that I have on the team, which is a bunch more, plus for Gianna to get another chance to race and some of the ones that are right on that border to get another chance … also just to tighten up and sharpen up for them to see what they can do so we can have our strongest team at the conference championships,” Ryan said.
The cross-country season is already coming to an end with the last meet at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse before the postseason starts. The ‘Cats will travel to Houghton next weekend on Saturday, Oct. 21 for the GLIAC conference championships, followed by the team traveling to Evansville, Indiana for the NCAA Midwest regional championship on Saturday, Nov. 4.
