While the Men’s Soccer and varsity football teams have been receiving their deserved attention in the last few weeks, the Colorado School of Mines Cross Country Teams have been flying under the radar. As winter sports approach, the cross country teams
remain the sole fall sport still continuing their season, as they competed in the NCAA division II central region championship Saturday in Wayne, Nebraska.
On Saturday the Men’s and Women’s Cross Country teams both competed in one of their largest meets of the season in the Louisville Classic at Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, KY.
Leading off of a fifteenth place overall finish from senior Ben Zywicki, the Men’s Cross Country Team soared to second place overall out of 38 teams, following Louisville University, a Division I program. The Orediggers also defeated other Division I teams including the University of Mississippi, Georgia Tech, UNC Greensboro, Georgia University, University of Kentucky and the University of Missouri. Additionally, Mines outlasted other ranked Division II programs including #4 Grand Valley State, #7 Southern Indiana, #8 Queen’s University, #10 Shippensburg, #11 Edinboro, #12 Harding, #23 Columbus State and #25 Bellarmine. Zywicki’s time of 24:03 was less than 45 seconds behind the leader and was in the top five of Division II runners.
The CSM track & field team hosted its first meet at the Stermole Track & Field Complex on Friday afternoon. CSM competed in a dual meet against UC-Colorado Springs as the men defeated UCCS, 92-26, while the women defeated UCCS, 74-19.
The Oredigger women had two athletes with provisional qualifying marks. Kiera Benson recorded her first provisional qualifying mark in the long jump of 5.71 m (18’-9”) which ranks her in the top 20 on the pision II performance list. Savannah Afoa improved on her mark in the discus moving up to 15th on the pision II performance list with a distance of 44.91 m (147’-44”). Mines scored first-place points in 8 of the 12 women’s events.