Junior Sal Impelliterri raced to a 76th-place finish in 32:37.5 to lead the men's cross country to a 20th-place finish at Saturday's Great Lakes Regional in West Lafayette.
Ball State totaled 601 points, while Wisconsin (57) and Eastern Michigan (70) took the top two spots and received automatic bids to next week's NCAA Championships. Eastern's Boaz Cheboiywo and another Mid-American Conference team, Central Michigan (123), finished third and are expected to receive an at-large bid.
"We finished about where we thought we would," head coach Jim Sprecher said. "But some upperclassmen didn't lead us like they probably could have."
"There were a couple of teams we would've liked to beat, like Toledo, but they raced well," assistant coach Jim Trautmann added.
Impelliterri was backed in the 10,000-meter race by freshmen Jesse Davis (96th, 33:01) and Kyle Hinkelman (133rd, 33:45.6), junior Aaron Hoover (146th, 33:58.4) and sophomore Michael Olson (150th, 34:04.8). Also running were junior Steve Samuel (168th, 34:39.7) and sophomore Steve Schilling (175th, 35:03.7).
"Sal ran a strong race, better than last year (when he was 92nd at regionals)," Trautmann said. "Kyle ran a real nice race for a freshman; that was encouraging. We ran in what is by far the best region in the country, and that will be to our advantage in the future."
Sprecher added that another encouraging thing is the lack of seniors on this year's team. The only two, Terry Goodspeed and Brian Runyon, did not race.
"We return everyone next year," Sprecher said. "We had a fairly solid team, just no frontrunners."
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