Men and Women finish third at Running of the Cows

Three schools “ran”the Running of the Cows meet at Bill Huyck Championship Course. Carleton, the host school for this meet, finished first for both races, and Wisconsin La Crosse finished second, with the Mavs sliding into third place for both races as well. 

The uniform finish is nothing new for the cross country teams. The men and women are both upper tier teams in their own regard, and as the season progresses, we will surely see more of this. 

For the women, they had two runners finish inside the top-five of the 6K in senior Makenna Thurston and junior Emily Cunningham. Thurston finished second behind Fiona Smith of St. Benedict with a time of 21:42, while Cunningham finished fifth with a 22:09.7 finishing time. Sophomore Madison Matzek (17th, 23:23.5) and junior Makayla Bishop (19th, 23:30.7) also finished inside the top-20.

“I thought we ran well,” said head coach Jen Blue in a press release posted to the Maverick Athletics website. “Our top seven got out and executed. We just need to continue to work on closing our spread. Overall, I was pleased with how they raced and the strides that we have made.”

The other three in Blue’s “top seven” Saturday were sophomore Alexi MacDonald, senior Cassidy O’Meara and freshman Marenn Larsen. MacDonald placed 33rd with a 23:56.4 finish, O’Meara finished 50th at 24:24 with Larsen a half-second behind her to finish 51st.

For the men, they had two runners finish top-15, headlined by senior Tanner Meier finishing third overall in the 8K with a time of 25:13.2. Junior Ray Ure crossed the finish line a little over two minutes later with a 25:38.7 final time, while four other Mavericks finished in the top-50.

“Overall, I thought we did some good things,” said head coach Ben Held in a press release posted to the Maverick Athletics website. “We are still early in the season and figuring out how we run the best as a team… As we progress through the season, we will tighten everything up and close up our speed.”

The other four Mavs to finish top-50 were junior Adam Bohm (30th, 26:24.4), junior Nikolai Schmanski (33rd, 26:31.3), sophomore Maquanet Collins (37th, 26:48.9), and junior Leif Larsen (42nd, 27:00.4).

The Mavs have now taken part in two races, and will look forward to their next one Friday at Les Bolstad Golf Course for the Roy Griak Invitational, hosted by the University of Minnesota. The men will race at noon, with the women following shortly after, beginning at 12:45 p.m.

Write to Hayden Lee at hayden.lee@mnsu.edu