Junior Keaton Wendroth was the top finisher for the St. Thomas men’s cross country team at the NCAA central region championship meet Saturday in Northfield, Minn.
Wendroth finished with a time of 25:31.47 in the 8k race and placed 15th out of 181 runners. Freshman Jacob Gerhartz (25:53.67) finished second for the Tommies, while junior Robby Williams (26:17.42) finished third for the team. St. Thomas ended the meet with 188 team points and finished seventh in the region out of 26 teams.
“We had a lot of good things happen,” coach Pete Wareham said. “I’m proud of a lot of things … I think they competed really well, and that’s what we wanted.”
After finishing third as a team in the MIAC championships two weeks ago, improvement was the primary focus for the men’s team in the regional championships. Wareham said he viewed the team’s conference performance as “a different day” and hoped for a better race at the regional championships.
“I think that was yesterday, and today is today,” Wareham said. “Good things happen and just have a can-do attitude, and you just have to go about it that way and not worry about what happened two weeks ago.”
For senior Ethan Armbruster, individual and team improvement was his goal going into what he knew could be his final race at St. Thomas.
“We didn’t compete as well as we probably should have at conference, so we knew that we could improve. So it was just kind of going in with a chip on our shoulder,” Armbruster said.
Wendroth said the regional meet has been the team’s focus for a majority of the season.
“Well, to tell you the truth, we weren’t really planning on training all season for conference. We wanted to do better than we did … but the point of the season was to race well (at regionals),” Wendroth said.
The Tommies’ seventh-place regional finish likely eliminates them from the consideration for an at-large bid to the national championship meet. Armbruster was the only St. Thomas competitor in Saturday’s meet who the Tommies will lose to graduation. Six of the seven Tommie runners who competed in the regional championships are eligible to return for next season.
Sophomore Megan Terukina led the Tommie women with a time of 23:15.14 in the women’s 6k race.
Terukina finished 25th out of 186 runners, and the Tommies completed the meet with 352 points and placed 14th out of 27 teams.
Freshman Bridget McGivern (24:06.14) was the second finisher for the Tommie women. Diane Hubbell (24:09.39), Rachel Roth (24:14.54) and Darcy Dean (24:28.84) rounded out the top five finishers for the Tommies.
The regional championships mark the final meet of the St. Thomas women’s season. All seven runners for the Tommies in the regional meet were freshman and sophomores.
Jacob Sevening can be reached at seve8586@stthomas.edu.