WINONA, Minn. — In their first two meets of the season, the Saint Mary’s University nordic ski teams competed mostly against other teams in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

It was a good chance for the Cardinals to get their feet wet, so to speak.

Last Saturday at the Macalester Invitational, however, the Cardinals got their first glimpse at the “other” teams in the Midwest Region.

Teams like Northern Michigan and UW-Green Bay.

And, in a word, the Cardinals were awestruck.

“It was a long weekend for us,” admitted SMU coach Ben Popp. “This was the first time all season that we had everyone (on the team) ski, and it was also the first time we competed against some of the bigger schools.

“We were pretty much intimidated by those schools, and it showed in our performance.”
Mark Bolster (Kasson, Minn.) led the Cardinal men in the 10-kilometer freestyle race with a time of 32:00, while Caleb Grace (Duluth, Minn.) and Garrick Holey (Irondale, Minn.) were close behind at 32:48 and 32:55, respectively. Pete Schweich (Red Wing, Minn.) (35:01), Mike Uffenbeck (Drummond, Wis.) (35:18) and Joe Thompson (Lake City, Minn.) (37:42) rounded out the Cardinals’ top six.

In the 20K classic race, Grace was the top Cardinal across the finish line with a time of 1:05:39, followed by Bolster (1:09:23), Holey (1:09:42), Thompson (1:14:23), Uffenbeck (1:15:29) and Schweich (1:15:50).

On the women’s side, Amy Henjum (Woodbury, Minn.) led the way in both the 5K freestyle and 15K classic races, posting times of 20:03 and 58:37, respectively. Missy Mollick (Hastings, Minn.) was second in both races (21:45, 1:04.10), followed by Reghan LaFrance (Duluth, Minn.) (23:38, 1:05:17) and Colleen Bourque (Waukesha, Wis.) (26:15, 1:12:26).

“Hopefully we learned a valuable lesson from that meet,” Popp said of his teams’ performances. “We can’t afford to let what other teams do affect how we perform. We still have to go out there and ski to the best of our ability.

“We’ve got to put this meet behind us and keep striving to be in top form for the end of the year and the conference championship.”