October 14, 2023
Eagles Qualify Four More for Nationals
Max Johnstone, Andy Hackley, Elizabeth Beenken, and Caressa Kluver qualify as individuals for the NCCAA DII National Cross Country Meet.
All of the cross country teams were warming up on the course at 3:15 Friday afternoon in Ottumwa when lightning started closing in. Everyone was ordered to get back on their bus and wait for over an hour until it had passed. Thankfully the golf course where the Indian Hills meet was being contested had drained well after the downpour of rain, and the sun even started to peek through for a few minutes before the men's race started at 5:15, delayed from the originally planned 4:00 start time.
Our men's team captain, Conrad Lobb, referred to the rolling hills on the course as "friendly hills" since they weren't exceptionally steep. The results indicated that they were indeed friendly, as everyone on the team posted a personal best time for the season, and most set an overall PR for the 5k / 8k distances. Coach Long was quite surprised with the outstanding results given that the team had run multiple 8-10 mile days earlier in the week combined with our hardest circuit workout of the season in the weight room on Tuesday. We went into the meet planning for this to be a good hard training run to prepare for next week's regional meet at Faith, but everyone pushed through the pain of sore muscles and ran exceptionally well.
David Loveall led the way for the Faith men, coming within 20 seconds of our school record, posting an impressive time of 27:43. Conrad Lobb shattered the challenging 30 minute barrier with a time of 29:31. Caleb Murphy improved his PR by over a minute and a half with a 31:40. Max Johnston and Andy Hackley both ran fast enough to qualify as individuals for the NCCAA National Meet with times of 33:12 and 33:45 respectively. Ben Hackley and Daniel Subra were not far behind, running great races with times of 34:25 and 35:18.
The women's race started at 6:00 as it was beginning to get cooler and the wind started to pick up. Becca Hulinsky was the lead runner for the Faith women with an outstanding time of 20:41. Lydia Mueller crossed the finish line just a minute later with a fantastic 21:41 time. Elizabeth Beenken and Caressa Kluver joined Becca and Lydia as individual National qualifiers with times of 23:45 and 23:57 respectively. Next up was Karynna Ward, who improved her PR time by an incredible margin of over 2 and a half minutes, finishing in 24:51. Tina Lange also improved her PR by over 2 minutes with a 25:30, and Jeannie Wilkinson returned from an injury by running over 3 minutes faster than her season best time, completing the 5k course in 27:23.
We are praising God for his gracious goodness to us when we least expect it. Please pray with us for strength and endurance as we finish out the season with our final 2 regular season meets before we head to Nationals.
We would love to have everyone come out and cheer on the Eagles as they run next Saturday 10/21 on the Faith campus as the host of the NCCAA North and Midwest Regional Meet.
