Men Finish 3rd, Women 8th in Conference Championships
This weekend in Hillsboro, IL the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference held the men’s and women’s cross country championships. The field is made up of the 8 schools in the SLIAC that offer the sports of cross country. The men’ race is an 8k while the women compete in a 5K.
The men’s team has had a great season finishing 2nd at the Franklin Invitational this year while also posting two other top 10 finishes. The momentum would carry over into the weekend as the team posted a school best 3rd place at the SLIAC Championships. Finishing in front of the Golden Eagles were Principia College who took 2nd place and the new conference champions, Greenville College. To go along with their 3rd place finish the men were also able to put 3 of their runners on the All-Conference team. Alec Zaremba and Haile Jemane finished 12th and 14th respectively which landed them the honor of making the 2nd All-Conference Team. The major story for the Golden Eagles was Abram Deng who finished 6th overall. With his finish he was elected to the first All-Conference Team joined by 5 other members of the conference. To go along with his award, Abram broke the school record in the 8K by 32 seconds when he posted a time of 26:03. The runner that held the record before Deng broke it was teammate Rizik Lado who set the record 3 weeks ago at the Greater Louisville Invitational.
When asked about the future of the program, Head Coach Kevin Alessandro had this to say, “The athletes ran well yesterday. Last year the men’s team finished 4th and this year we took 3rd in a much, much more competitive meet. We have such a young team, the future looks very bright.”
The women’s team finished 8th in the conference championships. The team ran a good race with Samantha Cave leading the way for most of the meet. The team competed well throughout the race but a late surge by 3 other competitors slipped the team down the ranks and they were not able to recover. “This team had some really great individual performances and we are proud of that.”
Both the men and women will begin to prepare for the USCAA National Championships which will be held this upcoming Friday in Concord, New Hampshire.
