Johnnie Cross Country Blog

Cross country season will be here before we know it. The guys are getting after it now in summer training, and with five of our top seven from last year coming back plus 15:10 5000m man Eamon Cavanaugh, who missed most of cross country last year with a stress fracture, we are looking forward to a great fall. Last year’s graduating seniors will be hard to replace, but I am excited to get into the season and wanted to reach out to you with some upcoming dates to add to your calendar. There may even be some bonus highlight pictures from last year’s cross country banquet at the end of this post since I never posted those last year. Hope to see you on September 6th and on October 5th, and I will be in touch in a week or two with another blog post that will likely contain an apparel order form if you are interested in purchasing any SJU cross country apparel. Hope you’re having a great summer!

 -Maxwell

Thank you to those of you who made it out to our NCAA North Region meet in Colfax, Wis. last week! The course was in great shape, and a little sleet during the race never hurt anybody. Overall, I think it was our best race of the season as a team. Obviously it is hard to go seven for seven, but I’d say that five or six of our guys had their best races of the season, with freshmen Cole Stencel having an off-day with a side cramp around 3k in. As a team, we ran better than at conference two weeks ago. Obviously missing two guys from our top five, Carter Grove and Eamon Cavanaugh, hurts as well. There is no doubt that Division III is better than ever, and we’d like to think our region is the toughest, or close to the toughest, region in the country. Here is how we finished:

Well, shoot. I definitely meant to do more of these blog posts this fall. Turns out the to-do list gets pretty long in the thick of cross country season. Maybe I should be delegating more work to our volunteer assistant coach? Nevertheless, all of the sudden it is almost the middle of November! Our top seven will toe the starting line tomorrow at Noon for the NCAA North Region Championships at Whitetail Golf Course in Colfax, Wisconsin, hosted by UW Eau Claire. Before going any further, an overdue thank you is in store to all of you for the support during our Go Johnnies Challenge earlier this season. It may sound cliché, but we literally could not do what we do without your support each year, and I am very thankful to have such a generous alumni group behind us. In an effort to keep this blog post a manageable length, I plan to put out another post early next week with a Regionals race recap, as well as some highlights from our trip earlier this season to the Division III Pre-National meet in Pennsylvania and some more info on an exciting new addition to our facilities – a LightSpeed Lift anti-gravity / body support treadmill system to aid us in injury prevention and rehabilitation. Both of those things wouldn’t have been possible for us without your support each year in the Go Johnnies Challenge!

2023 Division III Pre-Nationals Meet in Newville, Pennsylvania

Left to right: Aiden Chalmers, Cole Stencel, Nick St. Peter, Max McCoy, Joe Gathje, Lloyd Young, Tommy Allen, Eamon Cavanaugh, Vincent Kaluza, Dylan Bartness

Anyways, it has been an eventful fall full of ups and downs, just like any other season. We placed 4th two weeks ago at the MIAC Championships without two returners from last year’s top five due to injuries – 8:59 steeplechaser Carter Grove (Osakis) and 15:11 5,000m man Eamon Cavanaugh (Oak Park-River Forest, Ill.). While it goes without saying that Carter and Eamon were missed and we’re looking forward to seeing them back in action during the track season, our guys rose to the occasion and executed a great race. It’s been especially exciting to see our freshmen trio of Vincent Kaluza (Rocori), Cole Stencel (Maple River) and Max McCoy (Mt. Michael, Neb.) get better and better with each race this fall. Senior Lloyd Young earned his third consecutive All-MIAC honor, and all but 9 of our guys recorded career personal bests on a Carleton course that is not particularly easy, with three more recording season bests and all but two running faster than they did on this same course at Carleton’s Running of the Cows meet earlier this season.

Our seven competitors for the Region meet tomorrow are as follows:
Tommy Allen – Senior, St. Paul Academy
Aiden Chalmers – Sophomore, Minnetonka
Vincent Kaluza – Freshman, Rocori
Max McCoy – Freshman, Mount Michael Benedictine (Neb.)
Nick St. Peter – Sophomore, Maple Grove
Cole Stencel – Freshman, Maple River
Lloyd Young – Senior, Bloomington Kennedy

Dylan Bartness (Junior, Robbinsdale Armstrong), Jacob Malecha (Sophomore, New Prague) and Ethan Leonard (Junior, Chaska) will also be serving as our three alternates after coming across the line as the first three SJU finishers at last week’s Fall Finale on campus. The Region meet is the meet we’ve had our eye on all year, and we still feel as though our best team race is yet to come.

I don’t believe there is a live stream of the race, but you can follow the live splits of the race via Wayzata Results here: https://results.wayzatatiming.com/meets/28768

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. The women’s race is just after ours at 1:00PM, with CSB’s team looking very strong and last year’s NCAA cross country runner-up and CSB senior Fiona Smith looking to defend her two consecutive North Region titles from 2021 and 2022. For anyone planning to come watch in person, I look forward to seeing you there! Come say Hello after the race.

More, including a St. Michael’s Games update, to come next week. Because I know that is the real reason everyone reads this blog!

• Maxwell & Tim