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NCAA Regional Saturday, Nov. 11 |
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Vallez's All-Region effort highlights Cardinals final meet of season
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John
Vallez All-Region |
Cross country skiing, that is.
With Mother Nature dumping more than eight inches of snow on the St. Olaf campus late Thursday night and into Friday, Saturday's NCAA Central Regional had the look and feel of a collegiate nordic ski race.
All that was missing were the skis.
And the Saint Mary's University cross country teams could have used a pair or two, as they tried to keep pace with some of the best teams in the nation.
The SMU men, fueled by the All-Region performance of Jon Vallez (Eagan, Minn.), placed 19th in the 23-team field, while the Cardinal women got a 54th-place effort from Tera Bollig (Cambridge, Minn.) en route to a 16th-place showing in the 21-team regional field.
"Overall, I'm pretty pleased with everyone's effort," said SMU coach Ward Berndt. "The conditions weren't the best — but they were as good as could be expected with eight inches of snow. (St. Olaf) did a great job of plowing off the course, so we were running mostly on grass, but as the temperatures warmed up a bit (Saturday), it got pretty muddy and slippery."
One Cardinal runner not affected by the treacherous conditions was Vallez, who clocked an eight-kilometer time of 26:41 to place 32nd and earn SMU's first All-Region honor since Mark Bolster placed 27th in 1999. Vallez's effort was one of four lifetime bests posted by SMU runners. Andrew Rath (Hillsborough, N.J. / 29:46), Jerod Baertsch (Winona, Minn. / 30:12) and Marty Howard (Chicago, Ill. / 30:17) were the other three.
Bollig's 54th-place time of 24:05 led the way for the SMU women, while Alicia Hartung (Menomonie, Wis. / 24:32), Kate Boisjolie (Austin, Minn. / 24:43), Sarah Zweber (Elko, Minn. / 24:59) and Ashley Davis (Hugo, Minn. / 25:20) rounded out the Cardinals' top five.
"The guys really stepped it up a notch," said Berndt. "It was good to see them break out a bit and put together a great race to end the season. I thought the women ran well, too, they just didn't run well enough to climb up in the team standings.
"This is a good way for us to end the year," Berndt added. "Hopefully we can carry this over into the off-season and pick up right where we left off again next fall."