The men's cross country team stuck together as a pack in theMid-American Conference Championship, but were not able to overcomesome tough competition. They ended up finishing in seventh placewith 197 points.
Gavin Thompson of Eastern Michigan University easily won therace with his time of 23:39 which was a meet record and 23 secondsahead of the second place finisher.
The top three team spots were filled by nationally competitiveteams. Central Michigan University, ranked 22nd in the most recentpoll, won the race with 46 points. Eastern Michigan University wasa close second with 48 points and Miami (Ohio) finished third with67 points.
Both head coach Jermaine Jones and student assistant MichaelJohnson thought finishing fourth or fifth was realistic. KentState, however, after starting the race off fast, ended upfinishing fourth with 98 points, Western Michigan finished fifthwith 146 points and Toledo finished sixth with 177 points.
The Cardinals top five finishers were within 30 seconds of eachother and the whole team was close to being within a minute of eachother. Senior Aaron Hoover was first to cross the finish line witha time of 25:45 putting him in 33rd place. Behind Hoover wasfreshman Justin Stadt in 35th place with a time of 25:49. SeniorSal Impellitteri and freshman Stephen Cohen took up the 39th and40th place spots respectively. Impellitteri finished with a time of25:52 and Cohen finished in 25:55. In the fifth team spot wassenior Steve Samuel who finished 50th with a time of 26:16.
Other runners for the Cardinals were freshman Jeff Kent whofinished in 26:20, sophomore Kyle Hinkelman who finished in 26:23,junior Zach Scherer who finished in 26:31 and Alan Hemmelgarn whofinished in 27:05.
"(Packing runners in) is the goal, they did it as well as I'veever seen them do it," Johnson said. "The goal now is just to movethat pack up to the front of the race."
"Seniors finished up front for the first time this year, andthen (Sal) is finally starting to catch on," Jones said. "We got totake some positives out of it."
A lot of runners on the team were able to have strong individualshowings. Hoover, Kent, Hemmelgarn and Cohen all set personalrecords. Hinkelman, Samuel and Impellitteri set season records.
"We're going to take a lot from this meet" Johnson said. "Onceyou get that pack together, it's a lot easier to do it again, causethey've seen and they've found each other out in the race."
The team will use this meet to build on as they have the nexttwo weeks to prepare for the Great Lakes Regional which will be a10K course instead of an 8K.
"It gives us two more kilometers to pick off people," Johnsonsaid. "Today if we had two more kilometers to run out there, wewould have beat Toledo and beat some of those teams."
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