The Tabor cross country team opened its season Saturday at the JK?Gold Classic in Augusta.
Finishing for the men were 83rd Dylan Crawford in 21:30.2, 91st Matt Spurgeon in 21:52.6, 92nd Justin Ball in 21:54.5 94th Nathan Vogel in 21:56.8, 104th Jacob Heil in 22:21.6, 111th Richard Nance in 23:18.0, 122nd Teal Stutzman in 25:19.5, 124th Quentin Brown in 26:13.3 and 125th Eric Funk in 26:15.4.
?Dylan (Crawford) ran really good race and looked strong throughout,? said coach Dan Swaney.
?Justin (Ball) started fast as usual but held on better than I thought he would late in the race.
?Matt (Spurgeon) ran consistent splits and moved up as the race, finishing second for us after being fourth after one mile.
?Jacob felt he went out too slow but ran pretty well except for dropping off the pace a bit in the third mile. Teal, Richard, Eric, Nathan and Quentin did well in their first collegiate races.
?The big surprise on the men?s side was Nathan. He?s been dealing with some knee pain for a couple weeks now so he started the race slowly and under control then accelerated as the race went on since it was feeling pretty good. He was sixth for us at the first mile mark and finished in a very close fourth, making up 22 seconds on Justin by the end.
?We had tremendous grouping and that will really help us out later in the season if we can keep people healthy and maintain that.?
The women competed with runners with Brielle Lund finshing 40th in 15:52.5. Following Lund were 62nd Erin Flaming in 16:53.2, 86th Makenzie King in 18:20.3, 103rd Elissa Richert in 19:50.0 and 105th Jordan Scheer in 20:31.9.
?The women all went out quite a bit faster than I told them I thought they should, but then they all finished faster than I figured they were going to so it didn?t matter quite as much as it could have,? said Swaney.
?Brielle ran a great race and was only seven seconds off her fastest time as senior last year. I was very impressed with that.
?Erin ran almost a minute faster than she did at this point last year and Elissa ran the fastest 4k of her collegiate career, going almost 30 seconds faster than last year.
?This was Makenzie?s first race over two miles so I thought she handled it pretty well.
?Jordan wasn?t too far off what she was running last year so that?s a good sign from her.
?We have two other women who weren?t able to run this week and they will help us out tremendously once they both have a little more time to get competition ready.?
Tabor?s next action is Friday in Goddard. The meet is hosted by Friends University, Wichita.
