MACOMB, Ill. - The Western Illinois Cross Country teams kicked off the 2010 season with the Early Bird Invitational held Friday (Sept. 3) at Spring Lake. The Leatherneck men finished with 59 points, finishing in second, while the women took third.
Augustana swept the men's (21 points) and women's (28 points) meet titles. The Leathernecks did take top individual honors in each race.Â
Senior Mike McGraw took the top spot, finishing the 8K race in 26:09. The Leathernecks had three other runners finish in the 'Top 25' - sophomore Chase Marlow (10th place/26:56), freshman Jared Summers (20th/27:51), and fellow freshman Zach Wiedeman (21st/27:58).
Seniors Chris Matthews (37th/28:59) and Bryan Pinta (42nd/29:18), and sophomore Matt Drendel (45th/29:38) rounded out the rest of the Leatherneck results.
The Leatherneck women were led by senior Carianna Cottone who took the top spot for the women's 6K with a time of 23:39. Freshman Alex Szymanski (25:15) and sophomore Alexa Williams (25:18) finished 11th and 12th, respectively. Senior Izzi Roy (36th/26:49) and freshman Mackenzie Gray (47th/27:31) rounded out the scoring.
"It was great to have Carianna and Mike take first place in their races," said Leatherneck head coach David Beauchem. "It's always great to have two individual wins in any meet."
The first match of the year saw the Leatherneck debuts for not only Beauchem, but for runners Summers and Wiedeman for the men and Gray and Szymanski for the women. Beauchem was pleased with the results of many of his runners, but noted that there is still much to be done.
"Getting to where we want to be is going to take some time," Beauchem said. "We still have a lot of team work left to do to get to where we want to be. Coming up we will focus on individual progression before we get to the team progression. But, we will come out and be better in the next few weeks as we head towards the conference championships"
The Leathernecks will be back in action on September 11 as they travel to Fort Wayne, Indiana, for the IPFW Invitational.
