Both the men and women of the Illinois Cross Country Club are Regional Champs! It was a strong performance for the entire team highlighted by tons of pr’s and nine All-Regional medalists at our own home course. The club got off to a great running start to the postseason in the first NIRCA meet of the year.
After a tough defeat at last year’s regional to Iowa State, the men had an excellent showing. The entire scoring five- Evan White, Adam Cobert, Eric de Guevara, Jared Ripoli and Nick Bushelle- all medaled. The team claimed the regional championship 36-50 over some tough, tall competition from Minnesota.
Of the scoring five, the standout performance belonged to Adam Cobert. Cobert broke through on Saturday, finishing as the team’s second runner with a huge 20 second pr and a time of 26 minutes and 21 seconds. He said it was “a real confidence builder.” The former soccer player earned his first cross country medal with a 6th place finish. Cobert, the former Pumpkin King, seems to be peaking at the right time and the sky is the limit in East Lansing.
Rounding out the top 7 were Joe Zeller (@ZanyZeller) and Michael “One-Speed” Frintner. Shout-out to Joe, the home-meet coordinator, for putting together a fantastic regional meet that went off without a hitch. Joe spent a ton of time this season preparing for the meet, time this week setting up and time after the meet tearing down with some help from the webmaster. Thank you Joe.
Just behind those two runners came another breakthrough from One-Speed”s rap partner, Ryan Somerfield. After running a big pr at UW-Parkside, Ryan came back and dropped even more time for a 27:21 on his home course.
Ryan should be in the front pack of the B-race at Nationals next week and he’ll be joined several teammates from an extremely deep IXC squad, like Jack Morrissey and Henry Wolf, who both ran seasonal bests at Regionals.
There were strong races across the board for the men. Griffin Bojan had a nice debut with the club, running 28:32, just one second behind Quinn “the Dance-llor” Todzo, who continued his steady improvement with a 10 second PR in front of his parents who came to watch all the way from California. Saturday also marked the long-awaited season debut of Sean “SMB” Bruyere. He’s back and ready to tear it up at Nationals.
Another Sean, Sean McCarthy had a great day in his second race this season. He moved up throughout the race and cut 1:26 off of his time from SIU-Edwardsville a few weeks ago. It was also the second race of the season for Danny Ayala, and he cut 27 seconds off of his Parkside time. A few seconds behind him, fellow freshman Cody Hansen continued a season of big time drops. Cody dropped 1:20 between his first two meets, and dropped another 53 seconds this week. These freshmen who have bought into the program are starting to reap the rewards and see the results.
There were several standouts on the women’s side as well in their bid to repeat as Regional champs. For the first time this year, Captain Megan Mocogni led the charge to defeat Minnesota 31-57 and take the regional title. She ran 22:57, a 25 second seasonal-6K best. Emma Grimes was second for the team.
Emma Burkhardt had a strong showing as the third finisher and seventh place overall. Emma has been a rock-solid top-7 mainstay all-season long and she had her best race of the season on Saturday. A big summer in which she “actually ran,” has been paying dividends for Emma and all of her hard work is paying off at the perfect time in the postseason. Following Emma were two other consistent contributors, freshmen phenoms Erin McKee and Lexy Rudofski.
Lauren Choi and Thea Cudnowski completed the top 7. Lauren had a great race, clocking a 24:42. It was Lauren’s first appearance in the top 7 this year, and it’s indicative of the team’s depth that there’s different athletes in those spots every meet. Just behind them, Heather Guetterman and track club president Paige Oboikovitz ran seasonal 6K bests.
Anna Piazza had a breakout performance with a 25:12, a 1:08 pr from her last 6K at SIU-Edwardsville. She has steadily improved all season long. Selena Wallace also dropped a minute off of her 6K time at SIU-E, another big improvement after dropping 1:12 off at SIU-E. Both of these ladies are rounding into form at the right time.
All in all, it was a great day for IXC on Saturday, taking home two Regional trophies on our home course and a great launching pad for Nationals next week. While it was a little chilly in the morning, it got warmer as the action heated up. There was a ton of IXC fan support at the Arb, thank you to all of the family and friends who came out to support the team! I can’t think of a better send-off for Nationals and the end of the season. Next Saturday, the club will be competing at the NIRCA National Championships in East Lansing, Mich. We’ll keep you posted with updates on what we hope to be another great day for IXC.
