SEASON RECAP
In short, this past cross country season was not exactly what we were hoping for in August when the season started. Returning our entire top six from our 2024 cross country team — and with three of those six running under 15:00 for 5,000m during this past track season and two more at 15:12 and 15:18 — our hopes were high for our strongest conference and region meet performance in quite a while. A few years ago, I don’t think it would be too harsh to say that a good number of guys on our team were not running as much as they needed to over the summer to set themselves up for success in November. Many were certainly running quite a bit and doing everything they needed to do, but our team as a whole was not entirely on the same page from top to bottom. I feel like this is probably the area that we have grown the most in the last few years, and Tim and I agreed after seeing how much this year’s team, in totality, ran this past summer that it was our best group from top to bottom in terms of summer mileage in quite some time. Unfortunately, with that came a few guys who maybe ran a bit too much and picked up some injuries towards the end of the summer. Several of them from our top five and top ten, too.
Vincent Kaluza, our top man from the 2024 cross country season in 25:08 and a 14:55 guy on the track last spring, picked up a shin/ankle issue right at the end of the summer. First it was the right ankle, then it was the left shin, then it was back to the right ankle… and on and on like that for probably 4-6 weeks. From this Doctor in St. Cloud to that Physical Therapist in Eden Prairie — we tried everything. Vincent did race through most of this, but had missed quite a bit of key training on top of having what we later learned was bronchitis for the conference meet.
Nick St. Peter, our number five / six man from the 2024 cross country season (and a 1:52 800m / 3:54 1500m man on the track) suffered a stress reaction in late August. He ended up being able to come back and race at MIAC and Regions, but like Vincent he had obviously missed significant training time after about six weeks totally off of running. He has been totally healthy and back to training since mid-October now and we are optimistic about a healthy track season for him in his last track season at SJU.
Jacob Malecha, Max McCoy and Collin Berg were others who would’ve likely been in our top five / ten who at some point or another missed time training, significantly impact our depth when Nick and Vince were also unavailable — obviously.
Every team goes through injuries, but I’d be lying if I said I slept like a baby this fall. We were essentially 100% healthy last year, and with little tweaks to our training over the last year I suppose this fall was payback for such a healthy year last year. Overcoming adversity is a worthwhile challenge, and these guys will be stronger runners and stronger people for having had to work through it.
CONFERENCE AND REGION MEET RECAPS
With all the context above, we felt like we did have our best races of the year at the conference and region meets. The region meet, especially, as the little sickness that was running through our team at the conference meet had run it’s course.
Finishing fourth at the conference meet — just six points out of third and 18 out of second — was hard considering if we had just been moderately healthy, or even just if Vincent was not racing with bronchitis, second place as a team looked very doable. Nevertheless, junior Cole Stencel and fifth year Eamon Cavanaugh, who all season long were a source of stability for us, delivered yet another consistent performance in fourth and tenth place individually earning All-MIAC honors. Next was junior Lars Molenkamp — undoubtably this year’s breakout performer of the year — who came up big for us as our third man in 26th place. It was fun to see Lars put together a great cross country season after previously seeing much more success on the track as an 800m runner (1:54 last spring).
With everyone back racing and illness-free at the region meet, it was definitely our best race of the season given all of the above context. Cole Stencel also continued his exciting string of races with a 23rd place finish at the region meet to qualify for nationals.
NATIONAL MEET RECAP
Cole finished 148th at the national meet, which was at the Roger Milliken Center in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and was the 22nd guy from our region — meaning he essentially replicated his region meet performance at nationals. Being more of a 1500m runner, Cole was happy to finish his cross country season on a high note and is looking forward to the track season.
A couple of highlights of our trip, which also completed Tim’s quest to visit all 50 states, was dinner with 2017 Saint John’s alum and 2016 NCAA Steeplechase Champion Ryan Bugler, who lives just about 40 minutes away from Spartanburg in Greenville, S.C. and joined us for Cole’s pre-race meal the night before the meet. Ryan is one of my classmates from SJU, so it was fun to reminisce about the glory days over pasta. After the race, we drove about an hour north into the Great Smoky Mountains to take in some views — with a stop for ice cream of course (Tim’s idea).
