The Tabor College women's cross country team placed ninth out of 10 teams this past weekend at the Jock's Nitch Invitational at Jones Park hosted by Emporia State University.
"This was a very successful meet for us, even if that's not overtly evident in the results," coach Dan Swaney said. "Coming into Emporia, our home meet had been the best race we'd had so far. But the Emporia course is tougher than ours and it was a very windy day on top of that,yet nearly everyone ran close to or faster than they did at our home meet."
The Bluejays were led by senior Christina Addison who finished in 23rd place with a time of 20:01, while freshman Erin Flaming finished in 55th place with a time of 21:34.
"A number of women had great days," Swaney said. "Christina ran 12 seconds faster, Erin was only a second slower, Leah (Kopper) ran the same time, and Elissa (Richert) ran an amazing 33 seconds faster.
"The down side to the whole day was that we were missing two of our runners who were still recovering from being sick," he added. "At this point in the season, although I really want everyone to run every meet,I think it's more important to have people do what they can to get healthy and be able to run later in the season when we'll need them the most, even if that means missing a meet now. The sooner they can get their bodies healed up the sooner they will be able to get back to training and run their best at conference when it counts."
Two Bluejays competed in the men?s race: Jacob Heil (62nd, 28:46.88) and Justin Ball (89th, 30:45.33).
Coming?Tabor will host the annual Alumni Homecoming Run at 8 a.m. Saturday before traveling to the McPherson College Open at noon.
