COLUMBIA, Mo.— The Southeast Missouri Cross Country teams will travel to Columbia, Missouri for their fourth meet of the season when they compete at the Gans Creek Classic Friday.
Hear from the coach
"This is what I consider the start of our championship season," said coach
Ryan Lane. "These next three meets are big meets, everything we have done so far this season we are using as preparation for this phase of our schedule. This meet is also a chance for our team to be aggressive because our training has finally reached the point to where we have the ability to."
Last Time Out
The Redhawks had their first off week of the season after competing in the Redbird Invite. In that race the men's team finished third totaling 95 points.
Garrett Dumke paced the team finishing in 11
th ahead of
Nick Cimmarusti and
Evan Fuller. Those top three have led the squad in each of the first three meets.
Ian Schwierjohn finished fifth for SEMO and it marked the first time he scored in a meet since transferring to the team.
On the women's side SEMO finished in fourth racking up 92 points. The Redhawks had three runners finish in the top 20 including
Lauren Eftink in 11
th,
Daphne Bishop in 14
th and
Lexie Dockstader in 19
th.
Personal Bests
The common theme across the first three meets is the amount of personal best times across both teams. In the home meet nine men and five women set new marks in the 5k. Leading the way for the men is sophomore
Trey Mygatt who has set a personal best in all three meets this season. His new mark in the 8k is a 26:42.2 at the Redbird Invite. He also set a new PR in the 5k in the Redhawks Invite with a time of 15:41.6.
On the women's side
Lauren Eftink and
Lexie Dockstader both set personal best marks at the Redbird invite. Eftink finished the 6k in 22:34.8 which is a second better than her time at last season's Gans Creek Classic. Dockstader ran a 22:58.4 a 23 second improvement from her past high mark.
"We always want to run our best when it is the most important and this is the first week that I have high expectations for the teams," said Lane.
Gans Creek Classic Information
The men will be competing in the open 8k race against 22 schools, including OVC foes Lindenwood and Western Illinois. The women's squad will face 20 schools in their 6k race including both Western Illinois and Lindenwood. The live stats link and live stream link are posted on the SEMO athletics website.
"This course has been designed to host the national championships in November, so the quality of the course is one of the best in the country," Lane said. "Every race will be a terrific and fast race, and it is an opportunity to for our team to put themselves in a different situation then they have been in."
