XC Season Recap

Most people on the Monmouth College campus can’t understand the pain of a several mile run at 6:00 a.m. except for the Scots Cross Country team. With a season starting in August and ending within the coming weeks, the Running Scots have been pushing all season to end at the top of the Conference. Led by several returning juniors and seniors, the team also welcomed a slew of freshman and sophomore athletes as well, giving the men’s team a total of twelve runners and the women’s team with a total of eleven. The Scots Cross Country team started their season back in August at the Titan Opener in Bloomington, Illinois. For the men’s team, senior Riley Dulin took seventh with a time of 15:50.45 in the three-mile run and was followed by senior C.J. Bonifer and junior Jonah Cecil, three athletes who largely contributed to the Scots’ 2019 second place finish at the Midwest Conference meet. On the women’s side, senior Arika Hofmann paced the team, finishing ninth in the two mile race with a time of 12:24.35. Also finishing in the top fifty for the Scots was freshman Will Plumley, sophomore Neo Colter, senior Ezzie Baltierra-Chaves, senior Mik Moore, junior Gabriela Peterson, and senior Nyasaina Kwamboka. The Scots took to the course again two weeks later at the Les Duke Invitational in Grinnell, Iowa with the men finishing seventh overall in the 8000 meter course and the women finishing sixth overall in the 6000 meter course with the only other Midwest Conference school in attendance being Grinnell College. Once again, the men were led by Dulin who finished nineteenth overall and was followed by Bonifer, placing thirty-eighth, and Cecil, placing forty-sixth. For the women, Baltierra-Chavez posted the top time to finish in twenty-first place, followed closely by Hofmann in twenty-fifth place and Moore in twenty-ninth place. The following Saturday, the runners headed down to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois to compete in the Bradley Intercollegiate where Dulin was the only Scots from the men’s team to make the top fifty, and Hofmann, Baltierra-Chavez, senior Kara Fisher, and Peterson rounded out the top fifty for the women’s team. At the end of the day, the men’s team finished in seventh place, and the women’s team finished in fifth place, the top spot for a Division III team. With less than a month left until the conference meet, the Scots headed up to Rock Island to compete in the Brissman-Lundeen Invitational at Augustana College, competing against a total of twenty-three other schools. The men finished eighteenth, once again led by Dulin and followed closely by both Plumley and Cecil. On the women’s side, the team finished fourteenth, with Hofmann coming in fifty-sixth followed by Baltierra-Chavez and Fisher. The last meet before their conference championship, the Scots once again drove down to Peoria to compete in the Bradley Pink Classic. The men finished in twelfth, and the women finished in fourteenth. Dulin was the top finisher in twenty-second place, followed by Plumley and Bonifer while Hofmann finished in the top spot for the girls followed by Baltierra-Chavez and Moore. The runners finished their season with the MWC meet in Wisconsin this past weekend. The men placed fifth as a team, with the top finisher being Dulin, finishing fourth overall with a time of 26:34.69 and being the only male Scot in the top twenty. On the women’s side, finishing fourth overall as a team, Hofmann placed ninth with a time of 24:11.83 followed by Baltierra-Chavez in eleventh and Moore in fifteenth. All four top twenty finishers also secured a spot as All-Conference runners, and the team brought their season to a strong close.

Brooke McCormick - Sports Editor