CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — The Southeast Missouri men's and women's cross country teams hit the trail for their third meet of the season Friday in Normal, Illinois for the Redbird Invite, hosted by Illinois State University.
Last Time Out
The Redhawks ran at the EIU Walt Crawford Open on September 5. The teams had a plan to pack run and get a preview of the course for the conference meet. The top eight runners for SEMO all finished within 33 seconds of each other.
Nick Cimmarusti finished in 15
th place with a time of 26:25.5 to pace the squad ahead of
Garrett Dumke in 16
th with a time of 26:28.9.
Evan Fuller finished third for the Redhawks finishing in 21
st in 26:43.8.
For the women's team, the top five finishers for the Redhawks finished within two seconds of each other.
Lexie Dockstader led the squad finishing in 16
th place in 23:19.6.
Layla Fliege finished in second for SEMO finishing 17
th in 23:20.0. There was a tie for 18
th between
Daphne Bishop and
Lauren Eftink both running the race in 23:20.1.
Julia Martinez Dura wrapped up the scoring finishing in 20
th in 23:22.8.
Another PR
Another race for
Trey Mygatt and he set another personal best. HE has now ser two personal bests in the opening races of the season. He opened the season at the Redhawk Invitational and set a one minute and 39 second personal best time. Last week he ran the 8k in a 26:47.9, which was a 46 second improvement from last season's best.
"Trey is in a significantly different spot from last season," said coach
Ryan Lane. "He's doing workouts faster than he ran last year so that a pretty fun spot to be in."
Redbird Invite
The meet was supposed to start at 11 a.m. before the threat of rain moved it up to 9 a.m. The men's 8k will fire off at 9 followed by the women's 6k at 9:45. Competing at the meet against the Redhawks and the Redbirds is OVC foe Western Illinois, Chicago State, and Northern Iowa. Joining the D1 schools are D3 schools, Illinois Wesleyan University and Wartburg College.
"I would consider our true opener," said Lane. "We will be racing all out for the first time at the distances that we will compete at the conference meet."
With this distance in mind the squad has been working on getting the right pace to compete.
"We have been working really hard on pacing appropriately for what our current fitness is," Lane said. "We are making sure we have the confidence to go out fast enough, but also some of our more aggressive runners are paying attention to what their pace needs to be at the start to finish the race strong."
Looking ahead
The squads only have two more races after this meet before the OVC Championships. After a week off SEMO will run at the Gans Creek Classic hosted by the University of Missouri, in Columbia, Missouri on September 26.
"We only have three opportunities to practice our race distance before conference," Lane said. "This is our first one, so we don't have a lot of competition in cross country so we have to take advantage of when we compete at these distances."
