IXC women first, men third at Great Plains Regional

Saturday’s NIRCA Great Plains Regional brought more club competitors than ever before. The first meet of the postseason also brought strong performances from a lot of different places for IXC. The women’s team claimed its fifth consecutive Great Plains Regional championship while the men placed third. The women’s top 5 put on a dominant showing, claiming five of the top-10 all-Regional medals while promising performances came from across the men’s squad.

“The goal for Regionals is not how Regionals goes, it’s how we move forward,” head coach Steve Krauklis said. “We’ve been building our team for Nationals, not for Regionals.”

The women’s team has been dominant in Regional competition, and that trend continued on Saturday. The Great Plains Regional Championship began in 2011 and the women have won the meet every single year. They also won the previous year when the meet was still the Midwest Regional. And the victories have been dominating. In the each of the five years of the Great Plain Regional, the women have scored 35 points or fewer. This year’s squad defeated Wisconsin 27-54.

Women’s captain Megan Mocogni claimed the individual Regional title with a time of 23:01. Grad student Beth McGreal was the next to cross the line at 23:11. Both moved up one spot from their last time at Regionals. Mocogni finished second last year and Beth moved up from a third place finish during her senior year in 2013. It was the second time racing at the Arboretum in as many weeks for the women’s two headliners. On October 23 at the Illini Open, Mocogni smashed her own club record in the 5K, running 18:06 while Beth took 10th place.

It was also a strong performance from the rest of the women’s scoring pack. Lauren “LoCho Cinco” Choi continued an extremely impressive senior campaign with a sixth place finish. Lauren ran nearly a full minute faster than last year’s Regional meet and moved up 10 places. The always dependable Heather Guetterman came through in eighth place and Emma Burkhardt, in her first race coming back from injury moved right back where she was needed as the team’s fifth runner. Emma also took home the tenth and final all-Regional medal. Freshman Anneliese Schulz put in another strong performance and junior Allison Gibson continued the best cross country season of her collegiate career with a 16th place finish. She improved 30 places from last year and shaved nearly two whole minutes off of her time.

Allison’s roommate Hannah Behle had her best race of the season at Regionals and a strong finishing kick. Her parents also provided some delicious warm beverages and snacks after the meet. (Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Behle!) Anna Piazza also had a strong race. Adriana Miltko had a solid showing in her first collegiate race and Nataly Medina had a strong season debut, running 50 seconds faster than at last year’s Regionals. Training partners Noel Brindise and Megan Frintner both set PR’s, by 40 and 15 seconds respectively. In her second race with the club, Morgan Crivlare showed marked improvement, running nearly 3 minutes and 15 seconds faster than she did at Augustana on September 25.

The men’s team took third place behind Wisconsin and Iowa State. The men’s team has also done well historically at Regionals, placing in every year of the Great Plains and Midwest and even back to when Ball State’s MC5 was the Regional Championship in 2007 and 2008. In his second race with the club, Auburn Jimenez once again finished as the men’s top runner in sixth place. Brad “The Professor ” Coyle and Michael “One-Speed'” Frintner were the men’s next two finishers. Freshman Willy Wolf and assistant coach Ryan Somerfield contributed to the team’s scoring five for the first time this season in 15th and 18th place respectively. Ryan ran 25 seconds faster than at last year’s Regional and over two minutes faster than he did his freshman year. Freshman Josh Feldman and junior David “Cliff” Choi completed the men’s top seven. Racing wasn’t Choi’s only contribution to the meet; he also carved an intricate NIRCA pumpkin that was a centerpiece of the post-race awards ceremony and delighted club running fans of all ages. (Alumni Jonny Hoots also was a carving contributor.)

After a stellar summer of training and a season of races where he just keeps improving, Quinn “The Dancellor” Todzo ran one of his strongest races of the season in front of his parents, visiting all the way from the San Francisco. QT was just six seconds off his PR in poor conditions. Freshman Arturo Woodward-Montes wasn’t far behind and has also been improving all season. Sophomores Matt “Swagmaster” Dini and Dan “DJ” Johnson had strong races. Brett Barsanti ran nearly two minutes faster than he did at Regionals last year, setting a huge new PR. Freshmen Andrew Gensburg and Muneeb Ansari had nice collegiate debuts, with Andrew breaking 30 minutes and Muneeb meeting his pre-race goal by dipping under 32.

Saturday also marked the IXC debuts of Michael Gleason, Adam “Kid Adam” Bruyere, Anders Dinterman, Mike “Fear the Beard” Perez, and Scott Sompel in the men’s race. For the women, Mimi “Lil’ B” Rodriguez and Michelle Delana made their collegiate debuts.

The Regional meet was bigger than ever this year and everything ran extremely smoothly thanks to the efforts of home meet coordinator Big Sean “The Real SMB” Bruyere. (Sean also made his season debut after battling injury and has his target set on Kid Adam at Nationals.) It’s the third straight year IXC has gotten to host the Great Plains Regional and the meet has added more than 100 runners since 2013. This year featured 14 teams, including Kansas and Nebraska from the Heartland Region.  Thank you to Sean for working all season to ensure a successful meet and a great start to the postseason.

Thank you also to all of the friends and family who came out to watch IXC compete. It’s a great advantage to race at home and it’s even greater when we have people out there to support us. Thanks for braving the cold and wetness to cheer on the team, we truly appreciate the support.

IXC’s will next toe the line in Lexington, Kentucky for the NIRCA National Championships on November 14. It’s the final race of the season and we’ll keep you posted with updates on the most important race of the season.