09/17/06

In the 2005 season, the Saints team that went on to finish 26th in the nation at the NAIA Cross Country Championship traveled to Mequon, Wisconsin, for the Concordia-Mequon Invitational. They finished 2nd with a team score of 63 points.

Saturday afternoon the Saints obliterated the field of the 2006 Concordia Invitational in finishing 1st with a team total of 30 points, far ahead of runner-up Concordia-Mequon University's 63 points.

All five points-scorers for the Saints finished in the top-10 on the 6K course, led by Erin Reicks' 3rd place time of 25 minutes and 31 seconds.

Stacy Kantola finished immediately behind Reicks in 4th with a time of 25:37. Brittany Peterson (5th, 25:43), Jessi Weickert (8th, 26:13) and Megan Salo (10th, 26:31) filled out the remaining scoring places for the Saints.

Saturday's meet may also have shown the kind of progress the Saints runners may expect as the season wears on.

Earlier in the season the Saints and Ripon (Wis.) College were both among the competing teams at the Tom Berry Invite in Green Bay. In that meet the Saints finished ahead of the Falcons from Ripon as they finished 1st with 86 points, but only 8 points ahead as Ripon was nipping at the Saints' heels in 2nd.

In Mequon, the Falcons were far behind St. Scholastica as they finished with 72 points in 3rd place.

Different training cycles between teams can account for differences between competitors in similar meets, but Reicks, Kantola, Bridget Smith, Tara Connolly, Maggie Kading (ran a personal best 26:56 at Mequon), and the rest of the Saints appear poised to make a run at an NCAA bid in their first year of competing at the NCAA Division-III level.