In its third consecutive first-place finish, the UW men’s cross country team swept the 17-team competition at the Jim Drews Invitational Saturday. Wisconsin scored 19 points and earned a 69-point victory over UW-La Crosse, the team’s nearest competitor with 88 points.
The Badgers captured five of the top six individual places with junior Josh Spiker winning the individual title in a time of 24:41. Following close behind Spiker was UW freshman Tim Nelson, who finished third overall in 24:26. Simon Bairu, Chris Solinsky and Bobby Lockhart rounded out Wisconsin’s scorecard and captured the Inviational’s fourth- through sixth-place positions, respectively. The three runners finished with less than a second separating their final times.
UW senior Joe Eckerly finished in eighth with a time of 25:22, and freshman Teddy O’Reilly earned 12th place with a time of 25:40.
The Badgers have won four consecutive Big Ten Championship titles, and the team will have two weeks to prepare for this year’s title meet, which is to be held in East Lansing, Mich., on Nov. 2.
The UW women’s cross-country team was also in action over the weekend, placing seventh in its first major competition of the season on Saturday, Oct. 18, in Waterloo, Iowa, at the NCAA Pre-National Meet. The 17th-ranked Badgers placed seventh in the 6000-meter Gold Race among a distinguished field of competitors. In team competition, second-ranked Stanford finished first, followed by sixth-ranked North Carolina State, seventh-ranked Colorado, 12th-ranked UCLA, 15th-ranked Wake Forest and 21st-ranked Missouri.
For the second consecutive meet, fifth-year senior Maggie Guiney set the pace for the Badgers. Guiney’s time of 21:05.5 placed her 27th overall in individual standings. Finishing in 31st place was UW senior Hilary Edmondson, who set a new personal best with 21:11.0. Her previous personal record for the cross-country 6000-meter event was 21:14.4, which she set last November. Edmondson’s performance marked the fourth consecutive meet that she has been one of the UW’s top two runners. Michelle Lilienthal completed the Badgers’ presence in the top 50 with a 47th-place finish in 21:33.3.
Linsey Blaisdell placed 52nd in 21:36.1. Sarah Kolpin finished shortly after Blaisdell with a 73rd place finishing time of 21:56.9. Leslie Patterson followed in 22:01.1 for a 78th-place finish, and ‘A Havahla’ Haynes followed in 105th place with a time of 22:19.8
The Badgers are off next week and will soon begin to prepare for the Big Ten Championships, also to be held on Sunday, Nov. 2, in East Lansing, Mich.
-compiled from staff reports