2012 Cross County Season By The Numbers

# of Meets - 7
# of States Visited  - 5
# of AMC Cross Country runners of the Week - 3
# of AMC All Conference - 3 - Kristen Garwood, Breanne Newton, and Taylor Whitmore
# of NAIA National Qualifiers - 3 - Most ever
# of NAIA Cross Country All-Americans - 1 - First ever Cross Country All American
# of School Record Broken - 2 the women's 5k and 6k
# of Personal Records - too many to count - Edward gregg broke his personal record in the 8k by over 4 minutes this year. Way to go Edward.

# of NAIA Academic All-Americans - 4 - Sarah Erickson, Edward Gregg, Nicole Greisbaum, and Jessica Bailey

AMC Honors
Kristen Garwood - AMC Runner of the year & Freshman of the year
Taylor Whitmore - AMC - Newcomer of the year

We had a great 2012 Cross Country Season, now its just time to build and get ready for 2013.

Highlights From Cross Country Season 2012

We started out our Season at the University of Illinois Illini Challenge On August 30th - Here are some links to the articles written by our SID Jordan Argo.

First of the race of the year in the books for the Men. Great way to start off the year.
http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/240.php

Review of First Race for the women, everyone ran a great race and its a great way to start off the year.
http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/239.php


We then trained the entire month of September and then headed to Rim Rock Farm and home to the University of Kansas. We ran well and got the jump on all other NAIA teams as Rim Rock Farm will host the 2013, 2014 NAIA Cross Country National Championships.

Our next meet was a home meet the Trojan Invite and we won both the men and women's titles. The team was told to stay together for the first mile and then they could race. It was pretty cool to see the Big Red machine rolling and running as a team.

On October 13 we traveled across the Mississippi river to Jacksonville, IL for the meet at Illinois College. The women's dominated the event winning the team title, and having Breanne Newton and Kristen Garwood go 1-2 here are the article links

 http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/303.php- Women's Team

 http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/304.php - Men's Team

The following week we traveled to Grand Rapids Michigan for the NAIA Great Lakes Invitational Hosted by Aquinas College. This was a great meet. We wanted to go to a big meet and get some experience running in a large race. There were over 300 competitors. The women's team did not score but Kristen and Bre ran very well, in the top 15. We knew we might have a very special season on hand. On the men's side we ran very well, we are a young team and this was the type of big race experience that the men's team needed.

The conference meet was next on November 2nd - This is where we had to be our best to get to the NAIA National meet. The Girls team ran very well with Kristen and Breanne Newton going 1-2 and crushing the field by over 40 seconds. On the men's side Taylor Whitmore ran a great race and came away will AMC - All Conference honors All three qualified for NAIA Cross County Nationals. Here are the links to articles

http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/345.php - Women's Team article

http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/346.php - Men's Team Article


NAIA Cross Country Nationals was held November 17th in Vancouver Washington. Had a great time at NAIA Nationals. So Proud of all how everyone did. Kristen Garwood was 23rd at Nationals running 18:24 and recieving NAIA All - American status. She becomes the first ever cross country runner and only second female from Track and Cross Country to Receive ALL - American status.

Also Running at NAIA Nationals for the third consecutive year was Breanna Newton. Breanna Finished 32nd and ran 18:35, a great time and place. But just to put it into context her freshmen year she ran 20:10 and finished 205th. Last year she ran 20:28 and finished 243. Yes folks a little math will tell you that she improved 211 spots and took nearly two minutes off her time from last year. Easily the most improved runner in the field.

Here are the article links for story about Nationals - http://www.hlgtrojans.com/article/374.php 

It's Been a While

I know that it has been a while since we have posted on this blog, over a year. Over the next few weeks you can expect some new content and even a few more posts.