The Fighting Scots cross country team entered the Brissman-Lundeen Invite Friday, Sept. 21 at Augustana College with a plan, and it paid off. The men finished fourth in a field of 32, a one place improvement over the 2006 team, and the women also ran a respectable race, finishing 17th.

Coach Roger Haynes says all of this success was the result of an attempt to run strong individual races, using the pace work done in training to develop a race model for each runner.

For the men, sophomore Clay Staley finished second overall out of 410 runners with a personal best time of 25:27. Fellow sophomore Brad Begyn finished 28th at 26:58, and junior Damon Bautista and senior Adam Rodriguez placed 47th and 48th respectively. All received awards for placing in the top 50.

The Fighting Scots freshmen wowed as well, with Scott Sheller running a 28:17 race; Drew Petersen finishing at 28:48, an improvement by nearly a minute over his previous race; Craig Maher at 29:42; Alan Rosquiez in 32:01; Derek Huff in 32:11; and Tim Bentz in 32:43.

The women harriers were equally impressive, with freshman Mary-Kate Beyer leading the way at 12th over all and setting a Monmouth College 6k record time of 22:49. Sophomore Katie Staab was next for Monmouth at 25:03, sophomore Amy Aghababian finished at 26:35, sophomore Jayme Ayers at 26:46, sophomore Briana Flynn at 27:05 and sophomore Sara Ditzler Rounded out the top seven at 27:35.

Haynes noted, “I think the team has made great progress so far, but the meets that matter the most are coming up. We will run tougher courses and even tougher competition as we get ready for the MWC, NCAA Regionals and the possibility of qualifiers for the NCAA cross country championships Nov. 17.”

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