Over the weekend, the women of the NMU cross country team headed down to Grand Rapids, where they competed against the rest of the GLIAC teams in the conference championship.
The Wildcats ran hard and earned second place overall in the championship out of the 11 teams that competed.
The race was heavily controlled by No. 2 Grand Valley, but the Wildcats were still able to make a name for themselves and NMU. Coming in first for the Wildcats and the tenth overall racer in the meet was none other than Madi Szymanski, with a final race time of 21:05. Behind Szymanski was freshman Ashley Choponis, who came running in with a time of 21:38, earning her the 16th spot overall in the race. Two Wildcats went back-to-back, placing 22nd and 23rd overall, with times of 21:56 and 21:57. Those Cats were Emma Sweeney and Lamar Gordan, respectively. In 27th place was Wildcat Sophia Potter racing with a time of 22:07, making her the last Wildcat in the top 30.
“I mean, a great performance at the conference and so now just kind of making sure we’re still training well, and recovering from the race,” Head Coach Jenny Ryan said.
Other finishes for the Cats included Dani VanLente, coming in 34th place with a time of 22:23. Following VanLente in the second heat of Wildcats was Beverly Harper, timing at 22:31 for 37th place overall. Following right behind in 39th place was Majia Maki-Warne with a time of 22:33.
“I mean, Grand Valley’s ranked number one in the country. So, it’s kind of hard when you have the conference, you know, the top team in the country in your conference but, you know, we do keep closing the gap and now we, you know, finished ahead of the other teams, which is great.., really proud of the team of how they handled it and handled the pressure because we knew we had a good shot to finish second and they went out and just executed and did a great job of the race,” Ryan said.
This weekend, the team is off as they set their sights on the NCAA Midwest Regional meet. This meet will be held at UW-Parkside, where the Wildcats have previously competed and won the race, easing the nerves as the race approaches. The race will take place on Saturday, Nov. 8. From there, on the 22nd of November, the Wildcats hope to head back to UW-Parkside, where this time it will be the NCAA Championship meet.
“We knew what we did there, what we need, what we could do better. Um, so I think we’re really really prepared for that course. It’s a great course and the team really likes it, but we’re adjusting a little bit to how we raced it last time to even move up further. So yeah, it’s good, it’s a specific cross country course, which there’s only a few in the entire country. So it’s kind of great,” Ryan said.
