The Great Lakes Regional meet is always one of the most competitive regions in the country. Some considered this a down year because both the men and the women only got two at-large teams into the national meet(along with the two automatic teams). However, I believe that all of the Great Lakes schools will do very well at the national championships. Another interesting note is that six Big East Women's teams made it to nationals and four men's teams made it to nationals. The Big East is definitely a power-house in the sport of XC.
The meet was held at Purdue University on an excellent "cross-country only" course. The weather conditions were absolutely atrocious for this meet. Some of the toughest conditions for racing XC that I've ever seen. It was extremely muddy and windy out there and the added 2k distance for the men only made things that much more difficult. The weather didn't stop our athletes from performing well.
Men-
The highlight for the men's team was the performance of Kyle Saginus. Kyle, once again, ran an outstanding race and missed qualifying for nationals by less than 1 second. Kyle placed 15th with a time of 31:57. Kyle ended up being the 5th individual not on a qualifying team. The NCAA takes the top four individuals to nationals. It was a heart-breaker for not only Kyle, but for the team as well. Kyle has been an excellent leader to this young group of athletes and they wanted to go cheer him on at nationals. Besides Kyle, it was a rough day for our guys. Illness and injury took its toll on our men's team this year. We lost our number 3 runner(Nick Szcech) and our number 5/6 runner (Keith Schueller) the week leading up to regionals. Brice Cleland had a bad ankle sprain the Monday before regionals. He ran the race, but I could tell he was in pain. We ended up placing 16th out of 28 teams, which was pretty disappointing for our guys. However, I'm not terribly upset with this crew. We have an extremely young team. We have 4 seniors, 0 juniors, 4 sophomores, and 8 freshmen(many of which red-shirted this season). The future looks bright for Marquette Men's XC. With another solid recruiting class, we should be fully stocked and ready to roll next year.
Women-
I thought that the women had their best meet of the season at regionals. It was a very solid team effort. We placed 7th out of 34 teams in the region. Once again, the mud and muck did not hold our girls back. The girls ran a very smart race with each of them picking off 5-15 girls in the last 2k. I won't highlight any one girls race because I thought they all had a great performance. Here are our places:
25th Anna Weber 21:57
42nd Jayne Grebinski 22:20
45th Laurie Dalrymple 22:24
53rd Amanda Beggs 22:31
56th Olivia Johnson 22:33
77th Maureen Keane 22:57
93rd Kate Horan 23:10
Of course we would have liked to finish a little higher. It was our goal all year to beat Notre Dame and we fell just short several times. The great thing about this group is that we lose NO ONE! We have no seniors on this squad. I really get the impression that most of these women are really starting to grasp the training concepts and they understand what it will take to reach that next level. Hopefully I can do my job and bring in 1-2 girls that can help this bunch for next year. Like the men, with another recruiting class, we should be fully stocked and ready to make a run at the national championships next season. Now its time for both of these groups to get some rest and rejuvenation. Indoor track is just around the corner!!
