MIAC Championships Preview, Egg Toss, Pumpkin Carving Contest

MIAC CHAMPIONSHIPS PREVIEW

This year’s MIAC Cross Country Championships are TOMORROW at Highland Park 9 Hole Golf Course in St. Paul. Crazy how fast the season goes by, yet August does feel like it was ages ago. We’ve certainly had a bit of a bumpy fall and while we will have most of our team competing tomorrow, we have a few who are battling sickness currently and a few who missed some significant time training this fall. Nevertheless, we will make the best of it and are excited to see what we can do!

We race at 11:00 AM and the women go at Noon. Course maps are below, and live results will be here: MIAC Championships - Nov 1, 2025 | Wayzata Results.

Would love to see a big crowd of alumni at the meet too!

EGG TOSS RECAP

We waited longer than we usually do for this year’s egg toss — partially to balance out to St. Michael’s Games events throughout the whole season — but also because I view the egg toss as the premier event of the fall and thus wanted to wait until it really felt like it was cross country season (i.e. October).

We had two new additions to what I am now calling the “Three Second Club” — an exclusive group of those who have thrown and caught an egg that spent 3.00 or more seconds in the air. That lists now sits at 27 pairs of teammates after Cole Stencel and Peyton Martinek from Team Flynntown came in at 3.02 seconds and AJ Olesen and Max McCoy then topped it with their toss of 3.07 seconds.

pumpkin carving contest

Home Run Derby and Homecoming Weekend

HOME RUN DERBY results

Connor Dow — 2025 Sultan of Swat, Home Run Derby Champion

Held our annual home run derby yesterday at practice. Per usual, there were some impressive performances amongst a lot of not so good performances. To get right to the punch, our winning St. Michael’s Games team only had two members who hit a single home run… those two members just happened to be 1st and 2nd overall on the whole team. Talk about carrying the team!

By defending his title from last year, Connor Dow became our first back-to-back home run derby champion since Seth Snyder in 1996 and 1997. There’s an award that will go right up on Connor’s parents’ fridge.

INDIVIDUAL RESULTS

1st - Connor Dow (So., Anoka) - 12 home runs

2nd - Logan Frank (Fr., Sauk Centre) - 11 home runs

3rd - Colin Kaster (Jr., Holy Angels) - 8 home runs

4th - Vincent Kaluza (Jr., Rocori) - 6 home runs

5th - Aiden Chalmers (Sr., Minnetonka) - 5 home runs

TEAM RESULTS

1st - Team Flynntown - 23 total home runs

2nd - Team Bigotes - 13 total home runs

3rd - Team Miles Men - 12 home runs

4th - Team Two Thumbs Up - 7 total home runs

OVERALL ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES TEAM STANDINGS

1st - Miles Men - 21 points

2nd - Flynntown - 17 points

3rd - Bigotes - 16 points

4th - Two Thumbs Up - 12 points

Fifth year senior Eamon Cavanaugh

Senior Nick St. Peter, who hopes to land a job in professional baseball after graduation.

homecoming weekend

join us at practice tomorrow morning - 9am at indoor track!

Brian Smith ‘83 - Saint John’s J-Club Hall of Honor Class of 2025

Quick reminder of the open invitation for you all to join us at our 9:00 AM cross country practice tomorrow morning (Saturday 9/27) in the indoor track if you are planning to be on campus for Homecoming Weekend.

This year's cross country / track & field inductee into the Saint John's Hall of Honor, Brian Smith '83, will be there to share a few words with the team and, more importantly, he has also agreed to be interviewed by our current team as well as any alumni present. A fun tradition to keep going after interviewing Tim and Chuck Ceronsky at our Homecoming morning practice last year to celebrate their own induction into the Hall of Honor. After the interview you would be welcome to go for an easy run on campus with other alumni / our current team or simply hang around the indoor track and socialize. Would love for you to join us!

Here is the write-up summarizing Brian's impressive career at Saint John's as well as information on how to register for the Hall of Honor event on Saturday evening, which begins at 5:15pm in Guild Hall, if you would like to attend: 2025 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: Brian Smith '83 - Saint John's University Athletics.

Among other great accomplishments, Brian became our program’s first ever national champion when he won the 1983 NCAA Outdoor 5,000m, before also going on to finish 3rd at the national cross country meet six months later. Additionally, Brian still owns our outdoor 5K school record (14:19.70) as well as the fastest 8K run by a Saint John's athlete — 23:56 from the 1983 national cross country meet in Newport News, Virginia. Congrats Brian!

Have a great Friday and hope to see you on campus tomorrow!

Maxwell

MIAC Preview, Golf Workout and Go Johnnies Challenge

GO JOHNNIES CHALLENGE FUNDRAISER

TOMORROW!

First off, watch the above video and have a laugh. Tim is sporting a pair of Normatec Recovery boots in the video — which we have been lucky enough to be able to buy for the team due to the money raised in the Go Johnnies Challenge in years past!

Anyways, a brief note about the annual Go Johnnies Challenge fundraiser that takes place tomorrow, September 16th — this fundraiser makes so much of what we do possible. Our cross country and track & field program would look very different without the support we receive from you all each year. We carry a large roster, about 30ish in cross country this fall and 90ish guys during the track & field season. Your generous support each year allows us to make up the difference in what the University provides for a budget so that we can carry such a large roster, bring everyone to every meet and continue to provide the great experience that we all had at SJU to each of our current guys.

With the funds raised the last few years, here are some things we have been able to purchase / do that we otherwise would not have been able to:

  • 2022: LightSpeed Lift anti-gravity treadmill system for injury prevention/recovery and trip to California during the track & field season for the Bryan Clay Invitational

  • 2023: Trip to the Pre-National Cross Country meet in Pennsylvania with 10 athletes and four pairs of Normatec Compression Recovery Boots (the boots that Tim is enjoying in the above video…)

  • 2024: New uniforms and warmups, pre-cross country season training camp trip to Itasca State Park, trip to Drake Relays during track & field season with large group of athletes

  • 2025: Pre-cross country season training camp trip to Lutsen, MN and mid-season travel meet trip to Rock Island, Illinois

This is in addition to the overall budget support this fundraiser provides for things like buses, food, hotels, etc. that come along with carrying such a large roster. Any support you can provide is appreciated more than you know, and our very own Chris and Kathleen Lee have already pledged to match each donation tomorrow dollar for dollar up to $10,000 just for cross country/track & field. Give $100, and Chris and Kathleen will then give $100 — for example — and so on up to $10,000. Thanks Chris and Kathleen, and thank you in advance to everyone for the support tomorrow and every day!

Here is the link to the fundraiser: Cross Country/Track & Field · GiveCampus

MIAC PREVIEW MEET RECAP

We ran our first 8K of the season last Friday at Highland 9 Hole Golf Course in St. Paul, the same course that the conference meet will be on later this fall, and finished 3rd out of nine teams without two of our top five runners. With sickness and injury going through the team, we’re looking forward to getting everyone on the start line later this season.

Our top two runners were again junior Cole Stencel — the reigning MIAC Athlete of the Week — and fifth-year senior Eamon Cavanaugh, who also finished 2nd and 3rd in the whole field. Last year’s NCAA runner-up Mohammed Bati from Augsburg won in 25:19, with Cole following in 26:14 and Eamon coming next in 26:55. It was a very hot and humid day, and the course was a bit soft from some rain earlier that day. Definitely not a PR day, but a good chance to see the other schools in our conference and get a look at the conference course, which everyone on our team except the seniors had never run on before. Full results below.

GOLF WORKOUT

Our annual golf workout, 18x400m @ roughly 5K pace (adjusted for being on grass) with 60 seconds rest, took place last week on the Intramural fields behind the baseball stadium. Shoutout to Tim for mowing a nice 400m loop of short grass into the field before the workout — the guys are spoiled these days with such a nice running surface for our workouts.

We had probably our most competitive golf workout in quite a few years, with three guys being tied at 8 seconds off by the end of the workout: junior Cole Stencel, sophomore Collin Berg and junior Lars Molenkamp. It’s always fun to have a run-off at the end of the golf workout — and a run-off it was. Each guy runs one extra rep by himself, and I take their official split without reading it aloud to the group until all three guys have completed their extra rep. Cheers of “way too fast” or “you gotta go!” rang aloud as the peanut gallery tries to mess with those participating in the run-off to influence the St. Michael’s Games team scores. I don’t think we’ll have a closer run-off than what we had this year anytime soon:

Lars Molenkamp was supposed to run a split of 81 seconds — he ran 78.44. 2.56 seconds off.

Collin Berg was supposed to run a split of 79 seconds — he ran 78.75. Just .25 seconds off.

Cole Stencel was suppose to run a split of 76 seconds — he ran 75.97. Three hundredths of a second off. Our King of Good Pace!

Most run-offs end up with guys being way off their assigned split since they no longer have the entire group running with them, not to mention some extra adrenaline with the title of King of Good Pace on the line. Even more impressive for Cole as he was leading every single rep of the workout due to being our fastest guy currently, so he did not have anyone in front of him setting the pace for all 18, I mean 19, reps.

Team Bigote ended up with the best average score of the four St. Michael’s Games Teams with an average of 12.3 seconds off.

current st. michael’s games team scores

19 points - Team Two Thumbs Up

13 points - Team Bigotes (Whiskers in Spanish… couldn’t tell you why!)

12 points - Team Flynntown

11 points - Team Watab

We have a nice training block here as our next race is not until October 3rd at the UW Eau Claire Blugold Invitational. Talk to you soon, and hope to see a lot of you at Homecoming on campus on September 27th!

Maxwell

Training Camp, Toni St. Pierre Invitational, Important Dates

NORTH SHORE TRAINING CAMP

The guys moved back to campus on August 15th before we kicked off our season in Lutsen from August 17th-20th for our pre-season training camp. We had a fantastic time on the north shore and enjoyed some great training together. Endless dirt roads and beautiful scenery. The guys loved it. Here are some more pictures, including our run to Pincushion Mountain, the annual watermelon eating contest, a canoe relay race on Sawbill Lake on the edge of the Boundary Waters, and a north shore themed St. Michael’s Games event — a rock skipping contest on Lake Superior.

THE TRAINING

THE FUN

first meet - toni st. pierre invitational

tomorrow, friday, september 5th

We have our first meet of the season tomorrow — our 3rd Annual Toni St. Pierre Invitational home meet — with the women racing at 6:00pm and the men at 6:45pm. Unfortunately, we have a few injuries right now and will be missing a couple of our top returners, but we are optimistic about their return later this season and are looking forward to seeing the rest of the guys get a race in after a great summer of training.

We had to move the location of the meet to River Oaks Golf Course in Cold Spring as our previous location, Boulder Ridge Golf Course in St. Cloud, didn’t want us on their golf course before September 15th. We have a great course at River Oaks and are looking forward to starting our season with a low key 5K against UW Stout, UW Superior and Northwestern (Minn.). The St. Cloud State women and St. Kate’s women will also be there to compete against the Bennies. To me, having the meet in Cold Spring feels a little bit more like a home meet for us than hosting in St. Cloud, and CSB+SJU did host a meet here previously in the early 2000s. If all goes well, we will look to host an 8K here next year and maybe even put a bid in to host the MIAC Championships on this course in the future.

Any alums in the area are welcome to join us at the meet and enjoy free pizza with our current teams after the races conclude. Would love to see you there!

OTHER IMPORTANT DATES THIS FALL

SEPTEMBER 16TH - GO JOHNNIES CHALLENGE

Our annual team fundraiser, and we are eternally grateful for all of the support our alumni continue to provide year after year. This fundraiser has been instrumental in helping us provide a great experience for our current athletes by giving us the resources to invest in injury prevention/treatment tools such as a LightSpeed Lift treadmill system, Normatec boots and more, along with helping us fund things like our preseason training camp in Lutsen this year, the track & field team’s annual trip to California, and other travel meets that we would otherwise not be able to afford. Every little bit helps, and thank you in advance again for your support. If you aren’t in a position to donate, join us at an alumni meet or regular season meet instead. We’d love to see you there and have your support in other ways, too!

SEPTEMBER 27TH - HOMECOMING PRACTICE WITH THE TEAM

We did this last year for Tim and Chuck Ceronsky’s Hall of Honor induction and I thought it would be a great Homecoming weekend tradition to continue. 9:00AM in the indoor track. Any alumni back for Homecoming weekend are welcome to join us for our current team’s practice to go for a run with the guys. Our current guys will have done a workout the day before, so will just be going for an easy run this day.

SEPTEMBER 27TH - BRIAN SMITH’S HALL OF HONOR INDUCTION

Saint John’s Athletics’ annual event to celebrate the next group of Hall of Honor inductees, which this year includes our very own Brian Smith ‘83. The event takes place in Guild Hall at 5:15pm and is a great evening full of socializing and storytelling.

Brian graduated from St. John’s in 1983 and became our program’s first-ever national champion by winning the outdoor 5K at the 1983 national meet. Brian also finished 3rd at the national cross country meet the following fall, and is still our outdoor 5K school record holder with a time of 14:19.70 from his national title winning race. You can read more about Brian and register for the event here: 2025 J-Club Hall of Honor Class: Brian Smith '83 - Saint John's University Athletics.

NOVEMBER 1ST - MIAC CHAMPIONSHIPS IN ST. PAUL

The MIAC Cross Country Championships return to the Twin Cities this fall and will be on November 1st at Highland 9 Hole Golf Course in St. Paul, just as they were in 2022. We’d love to see a big crowd of fans and alumni there!

Until next time,

Maxwell


2025 Cross Country Apparel Order

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a great summer! Just reaching out to send out this year’s apparel order if anyone would like to order anything. All orders will be shipped together to SJU so that our current guys don’t each have to pay $10 in shipping costs, but if you would like to order something from the store then submit your order at the link below and Venmo @MaxwellKuzara $10.00 for shipping along with your mailing address and I will mail your order out to you once it arrives to SJU. The store closes tomorrow night, Tuesday, August 26th at midnight. Here is the link to the store:

https://saintjohnscrosscountry2025.itemorder.com/

This is the first of two orders, as we will have another order in the next couple weeks for some of adidas’ nicer running gear just like we did last year. I am still waiting for the link for this store from adidas.

I will write again soon with a preview for the upcoming year as well as a recap from our training camp last week in Lutsen, Minnesota. The guys had a great summer of training and are looking very fit.

I’ll be in touch again soon!

Maxwell

Fantastic 4x800 and Outdoor MIAC Preview

Fantastic 4x800 at the Drake Relays

We’ve had quite the last couple of weeks since my last post. I’ll start with our 4x800m relay team’s school record breaking run at the Drake Relays a couple of weeks ago — wow! From left to right in the main photo above, which was also their order during the race, our team of junior Owen Montreuil, junior Nick St. Peter, sophomore Max McCoy and senior Tommy Allen broke our 54-year-old school record of 7:38.60 by Brian Racette, Bill Seidl, Greg Cook and Chuck Way from 1971 by running 7:35.84 with splits of 1:54.72, 1:54.51, 1:54.86 and 1:51.77, respectively. Not that the 4x800 is run all that often, but we now sit 16th all-time in Division III history with that mark.

We knew they could do it, but knowing we had to average about 1:54.6 across all four legs, it appeared as if it was going to be really close through the first three legs. That is until Tommy Allen got the baton. In Tommy’s words, his first lap felt like he was running the 4x400 relay as opposed to the 4x800. When I saw Tommy’s split of 53.02 for the first 400m I thought this was either going to be really good…. or really bad. Well, Tommy (the already 4x MIAC Champion) obviously ended up coming through for us with the huge anchor leg, which was about three years in the making for him, and a lot of excitement ensued when we saw our time pop up on the scoreboard and knew we had finally gotten the record. For those who might remember, Tommy won the MIAC Outdoor 800m in 2022 as a sophomore and also ran 3:52.03 for 1500m in that same year before having some injury struggles the last couple of years where he really didn’t get a chance to see what he could truly do outdoors. After following up his big anchor leg at Drake with a 1:52.61 open 800m last week heading into the conference meet this weekend, I’m excited to see what else Tommy has in store for us this season to cap off his excellent career at SJU.

A couple of other notable results since my last post have come from sophomore Cole Stencel, who ran a great 1500m of 3:53.95 at the University of Minnesota the night before me and the 4x800 relay guys left for Drake. Cole then followed that up the next week with a nice PR in the 5,000m of 14:45.71. Cole now sits #11 all-time as well as the #2 sophomore in SJU history for both the 1500m and 5,000m.

Nick St. Peter also had a very nice run of 3:54.28 in the 1500m last week at our meet at Hamline to tie Mitch Grand ‘23 for 14th on the all-time list.

OUTDOOR MIAC PREVIEW

We are very excited to be kicking off the 2025 Outdoor MIAC Championships later today at Macalester College and would love to see you there this evening or during the day tomorrow! I think we have a fantastic chance to have at least one guy score in every distance event, as well as pretty much every other event on the track and in the field too, honestly. The team race should be very close between us and Bethel, with St. Olaf lurking close behind.

The events kick off today at 2:00pm and tomorrow at 12:00pm. I’ve included a photo of the meet schedule below as well as the live results and live stream links.

Live Results

Live Stream

Thanks for following along!

Maxwell

Fantastic 800s, Drake Relays, Survey Reminder

We held our last home meet of the season last week and while it was a very small and more lowkey meet than usual, at the same time it was a bit rejuvenating to be able to stay home and not be travelling all weekend after some recent longer trips we’ve taken to UW-Platteville, UW-Oshkosh, etc.

The highlight of the meet, I’d say, was the 800 meters where our main crop of middle distance runners all lined up together to duke it out in what was a quasi-tryout for our Drake Relays 4x800m team for this coming week.

Tommy Allen, Nick St. Peter and Owen Montreuil had all but locked up their spots on the relay with sophomores Cole Stencel, Max McCoy and Lars Molenkamp all also vying for positions. Cole ran 4:14 for 1600m on our DMR during the indoor season, so he was the likely favorite for that fourth spot heading into the meet last week. However, Max McCoy — who ran 1:55 as a freshman last year but was a little banged up indoors this year — had something to say about that. Max PR’d to run 1:54.96 and earn his spot on the team, while Cole ended up running a very respectable 1:55.1 and will now shift his focus to the 1500m as we approach the outdoor conference meet. Full results below.

SJU Easter Track Meet 800m Results

Our 4x800m at the Drake Relays will be this Thursday at 4:44pm, and our team of senior Tommy Allen, juniors Owen Montreuil and Nick St. Peter and sophomore Max McCoy are very excited to see what they can do. I believe you will be able to live stream the meet on RunnerSpace.com, although you may have to pay.

Our team will also have a 4x100m Relay, Kevin Arthur and Max Reis in the 100m, Jackson McDowell in the high jump and Mitch Degen in the javelin all competing at Drake as well on Friday and Saturday. It will be fun to have a bigger group at such a historic meet for the first time in many years! Here is the full schedule:

Thursday, April 24th:
4:44pm - 4x800m Relay College Division

Friday, April 25th:
9:37am - 4x100m Relay College Division Prelim
1:30pm - High Jump University/College Division
2:11pm - 100m Dash University/College Division Prelim

Saturday, April 26th:
10:15am - Javelin University/College Division
1:11pm - 100m Dash University/College Division Final
3:00pm - 4x100m Relay College Division Final

Our 2023 Drake Relays 4x800m team of Nathan Clausing, Nick St. Peter, Tommy Allen and Dillon Diekmann, who ran 7:42.87 (#3 at SJU all-time)

ALUMNI SURVEY REMINDER

Just a reminder to complete our Alumni Survey about your experience at Saint John’s for our latest cross country/track & field recruiting efforts, if you are willing and able. Thank you very much to the many alumni who have already completed it! Here is the link again: https://forms.gle/7d3tDf4c9UHFJnu56

Maxwell

Fantastic 5Ks and Alumni Testimonials Survey

uw-PLATTEVILLE 5K RECAP

We drove to Platteville, WI last Thursday-Friday for what is one of the best 5K opportunities each season, and it certainly did not disappoint. About 47 degrees and a 2mph wind — 5K conditions that you dream of!

We brought eight guys and had eight PRs. Sophomore Cole Stencel, senior Eamon Cavanaugh and sophomore Vincent Kaluza led the way for us in 14:52.53, 14:55.32 and 14:57.97, respectively, which gave us three guys under 15:00 for the first time since 1983. Fantastic! Juniors Nick St. Peter and Jacob Malecha were next in 15:12.38 and 15:18.94 after both coming through two miles in 9:55ish — a very nice last mile for them. Freshman Collin Berg and seniors Ethan Leonard and Joe Gathje finished things off for us all going under 16:00 for the first time as well.

Cole comes in at #19 on the SJU all-time 5K list as well as #4 on the all-time sophomore list.

A low-key meet at home for us tomorrow before Easter Break and (hopefully) a trip to the Drake Relays next weekend for a crack at a fast 4x800.

Post-race Dairy Queen before watching the rest of the night’s races in Platteville

ALUMNI TESTIMONIALS SURVEY

I’m hoping to gather some comments, “testimonials” if you will, from all of you about your experience at Saint John’s — both when you were in school as a student as well as your experience as an alumni since you have graduated. These responses will be sent out to our recruits this year and in coming years in order to help communicate the type of experience team members have here and what makes Saint John’s special. The survey should only take you a few minutes and your participation would be very much appreciated! Thank you in advance for your thoughtful responses!

The first few questions (name, SJU graduation year, etc.) are required but after that the open-ended questions are not required. Answer all of them, or if you feel like you’ve said all you have to say after answering just a couple of them, you don’t have to answer every single one and can just submit.

Also, if you have a picture of yourself running for SJU, please email it to me at mskuzara@csbsju.edu as I’d like to include a picture of you along with your comments, if possible, when sending this out to recruits.

Thank you again for your time to complete this survey. I believe it will be very impactful in my recruiting efforts. I had our current team fill out basically this same exact survey and sent out their responses to our recruits this year and received very positive feedback from it.

Please try to fill it out by the end of the day this coming Monday, April 21st, as I would like to try and send this out to a few recruits next week.

Here is the survey link: https://forms.gle/zeHedmcJ46tz2Q947

Maxwell

Indoor Season Recap & Outdoor Preview

INDOOR SEASON RECAP

It’s always amazing how fast the track & field season goes by. All of the sudden it is early April and we are just five weeks out from the outdoor conference meet.

Hosting the indoor conference meet at SJU was a great experience for the guys and we had several great performances from the distance group at the meet. Winning the DMR at the end of day one was probably the highlight, as we were not the favorites on paper but we ran four great legs with sophomore Cole Stencel’s 4:17 1600m anchor leg (with a 60 second last 400m) sealing the deal for us. Check out this video highlight from the first day of the conference meet, with the DMR team’s celebration at the very end:

The 1,000m on day two was also a very good event for us, with Nick St. Peter placing 3rd in 2:29.48 (#2 at SJU all-time), Cole Stencel placing 4th in 2:31.11 (#6 at SJU all-time) and Tommy Allen placing 5th in 2:31.78. Points! Nick St. Peter also scored in the 800m, and Eamon Cavanaugh and Jacob Malecha just missed scoring in the 5,000m in 9th and 10th respectively.

2025 Indoor MIAC Distance Medley Relay Champions

Nick St. Peter - 3rd place - 1,000m

More DMR photos

We weren’t done yet after the indoor conference meet as we took a team down to the Wartburg Last Chance meet to take a crack at qualifying for indoor nationals in the DMR. Our team of Nick St. Peter on the 1200m, Wyatt Witschen on the 400m, Owen Montreuil on the 800m and Cole Stencel on the 1600m ended up running 10:04.89, which was not quite enough to qualify for nationals, but it was enough to set a new SJU school record! They took down the record of 10:05.89 set in 2022 by the team of Tommy Allen, Brady Labine, Alexei Hensel and Mitchell Grand at the same last chance meet. We ended up 17th in Division III and only the top 12 teams qualify for indoor nationals unfortunately. However, all four members of this year’s DMR team will be back next year and it is definitely something we will have our eyes on. Here were the splits from the team’s record-setting run:

1200m - 3:05.1 (St. Peter)
400m - 50.1 (Witschen)
800m - 1:55.1 (Montreuil)
1600m - 4:14.4 (Stencel)

New school record holders

Before moving on to talk about the outdoor season, here were our top open mid-distance and distance performances from the indoor season:

600m - 1:21.88 Owen Montreuil (#2 at SJU all-time)
800m - 1:56.84 Owen Montreuil (#11 at SJU all-time indoors)
1000m - 2:29.48 Nick St. Peter (#2 at SJU all-time)
Mile - 4:20.39 Nick St. Peter
3000m - 8:42.69 Eamon Cavanaugh
5000m - 15:24.71 Eamon Cavanaugh

outdoor season preview

We had our first outdoor meet this past Friday here at SJU, the Optimistic Invite, and the weather was actually pretty good. Last week was the earliest we’ve opened our outdoor season since 2021. It wasn’t a giant meet, but it was a good opportunity to get back to racing after a few weeks of solid training since the indoor conference meet. Highlights included Eamon Cavanaugh’s 31:38 10k and Nick St. Peter and Cole Stencel’s 59 second last 400m of their 1500m race where they ran 4:02 sitting and kicking - obviously.

In terms of other notable meets, we are hoping to bring a solid crew to the UW-Platteville Invitational for a great opportunity to run some fast 5,000m races next Friday, April 11th, and we also have our eyes on a fast 4x800m relay at either the Drake Relays or Penn Relays later in April before the MIAC Outdoor Championships - which are at Macalester this year - on May 9th and 10th. Looking forward to some nice spring weather and getting going with the main part of our season.

The rest of our outdoor schedule is in the graphic below. Hope to see you at a meet or two this spring!

-Maxwell

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN COACHING

From time to time I get sent information about coaching opportunities, both in Minnesota high schools and Midwest colleges. If you are interested in coaching and would like me to forward the info about these opportunities to you, just let me know. My contact info is in the footer of this page.

Cross Country Banquet Recap & Indoor Alumni Meet

tim miles
usatf minnesota hall of fame induction

If you aren’t aware already, Tim is being inducted into the USA Track & Field - Minnesota Hall of Fame this Sunday, January 19th at 5:30PM during USATF MN’s annual Award Celebration at the Eagan Community Center. You can register to attend by emailing office@minnesota.usatf.org. Tim is the 24th Coach in Minnesota history to be inducted. You can view the full list of inductees and current members here: Hall of Fame – USATF Minnesota Hall of Fame.

2024 CROSS COUNTRY BANQUET RECAP

GINGERBREAD HOUSE DECORATING CONTEST

Gingerbread House Decorating Contest Champions - Los Comodores

2nd place

3rd place

4th place

We kicked off the banquet with a gingerbread house decorating contest and gave each team 10 minutes. We had two teams who were successfully able to have a house that was actually standing by the end of the 10 minutes, so they instantly became our top two. While Team Beans was able to put together an impressive recreation of the Palaestra, indoor track and outdoor track, we chose Los Comodores as the winners since they were the only team who actually made a traditional gingerbread house that could stand on it’s own. Team Beans earned runner-up honors, Team Watab came in 3rd with their “house” that slowly fell apart and Team Beginner’s Luck came in last since their gingerbread house didn’t end up looking too different from when they took it out of the box. More pictures below.

show & tell

Max McCoy

Lars Molenkamp

Joe Gathje

Max McCoy took home the 1st place honors in this year’s show and tell with his bottle of Pedialyte that he says his doctor prescribed him after weeks of bowel movement issues… It’s all about presentation here, and Max really committed himself to the bit. Runner-up was A.J. Skinner with a t-shirt listing some of my most common “coaching phrases” that the team was apparently keeping track of. Rounding out the podium in 3rd place was Lars Molenkamp who brought a gift that a classmate gave him to try and make-up for not contributing at all during a group project in class this past fall. Joe Gathje, who finished in 4th place, can also be seen above showing & telling us about his go-to disc golf uniform.

ONE ACT PLAYS

Our winning one act play was from Team Beans, pictured above, who reenacted the team’s hike up to the top of the fire tower at Itasca State Park during our pre-season training camp trip this past season. During the hike, a few team members were a little too afraid of heights to make it all the way up to the top and, for one act play purposes now, came to be rescued by junior Aiden Chalmers (played by Aidan Thomas in the photos above), who serves on the St. John’s Fire Department and is known to be shirtless a little too often.

2nd place One Act Play - Beginner’s Luck with their reenactment of the St. John’s Athletic Training Room during cross country — I mean — football season.

3rd place One Act Play — Los Comodores — with their reenactment of Chuck Ceronsky’s Hall of Honor Interview this past fall

4th place One Act Play - Team Watab with their reenactment of Tim’s Hall of Honor interview this past fall

SENIOR GIFTS

Our tremendous senior class with their senior gifts — engraved bath towels and bars of Dove Men’s+ “Extra Fresh” soap. On the count of three say “washed up!”

FRESHMEN GIFTS

Freshmen class with their freshmen gift — funky SJU CC ties (none of them were able to tie their tie correctly for bonus St. Michael’s Games points for their team)

VARSITY LETTERWINNERS

2024 Varsity Letterwinners. Congrats on getting your name pulled out of a hat guys!

MISCELLANEOUS BANQUET PHOTOS

Freshman AJ Olesen sporting his recently won door prize

Team Beans’ re-creation of the Palaestra and indoor track in Gingerbread form

Seniors Joe Gathje and Aidan Thomas during our Serran wrap ball Christmas game

Tim judging if the freshmen tied their ties correctly

The grand door prize, courtesy of Goodwill in St. Cloud, won by senior Liam Sheeley

Junior Aiden Chalmers proudly standing by his team’s last place Gingerbread House

Senior Nate Courchane teaching the freshmen how to tie a tie correctly, after none of them were able to within 30 seconds to win a bonus St. Michael’s Games point for their team

final st. michael’s games team scores

Extra Sensory Perception, which serves as the grand finale of both the banquet and each season’s St. Michael’s Games competition, involves one member of each team hiding behind a random door in the hallway outside the J Club Room. Then, the rest of each St. Michael’s Games team must guess which door their teammate is behind. If they guess correctly, their team wins a staggering TEN St. Michael’s Games points. Going into this last event, the team scores were very close with just two points separating first, second and third.

In the end, none of the four teams correctly guessed which door their teammate was behind so the team scores did not change, and were as follows:

Champions: Los Comodores (40 points)

Runners-up: Team Beans (39 points)

3rd place: Team Watab (38 points)

4th place: Beginner’s Luck (21 points)

A very exciting banquet this year as it was such a close team competition other than Team Beginner’s Luck, whose name did not hold any truth unfortunately.

Congratulations to Team Los Comodores! I’ve been told each team member called their parents immediately after the banquet to deliver the good news.

LOVER’S LANE VIDEO

@johnnietfxc on Instagram

One of our former team members, Carter Jostock, has been kind enough to do some video work for us this fall between his duties of making the recap and highlight-reel videos for the SJU Football team — and he does a fantastic job. Carter ran cross country with us last fall as a freshman before deciding his heart just wasn’t in it anymore. Carter put together this quick video above from the annual Lover’s Lane workout earlier this season as well as a recap video from our opening home meet, the Toni St. Pierre Invitational, in St. Cloud. I will link that video down below as well in case you haven’t seen it.

@johnnietfxc on Instagram

INDOOR ALUMNI MEET

Last year’s alumni 4×4

Hope you can join us at this year’s alumni meet next Saturday, January 25th at 11:00am at the indoor track. The annual alumni social will be in the Founder’s Room in the Quad again after the meet. Time to find three classmates and a costume and send us an over-confident seed time for your 4x4 team!

I hope you had an enjoyable holiday season and a happy new year, and we’ll talk to you again soon.

-Maxwell

Regions Recap & St. Michael's Games Update

2024 NCAA NORTH REGIONAL RECAP

25:23.2 Vincent Kaluza (42nd place)
25:46.5 Aiden Chalmers (58th)
25:46.5 Cole Stencel (59th)
26:12.6 Nick St. Peter (78th)
26:18.8 Eamon Cavanaugh (81st)
26:21.2 Jacob Malecha (85th)
26:47.8 Joseph Gathje (100th)

Team Place: 11th of 31 teams

Well the North Region once again displayed it’s strength. The NCAA ended up selecting the top six men’s teams from our region for the National meet — the most of any of the ten DIII regions. Those six teams ending up placing 1st, 4th, 8th, 16th, 19th and 28th at Nationals and our Region also had the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th place individuals at Nationals as well.

Our #2 man all year, senior Eamon Cavanaugh (25:28 at Eau Claire earlier this season), came down with a little sickness leading up to the region meet which may explain him ending up as our 5th man on race day. Otherwise, Tim and I were in agreement that this was our best race of the year as a team. The course was actually fairly soft and muddy, and there was a strong 20mph wind with 30mph gusts on race day. Our guys moved up well throughout the race, and I’d say the highlight was another big race by Aiden Chalmers to run 25:46 and finish as our #2 on the day before he heads off to Spain next semester to study abroad. Aiden got better and better each race this fall.

Sophomore Vincent Kaluza ended up missing qualifying for the national meet as an individual by just 13 seconds. Going into the race we knew Vincent definitely had a chance, but also knew it would be tough in this region. St. Scholastica senior Calvin Boone, who is a returning XC All-American from last year, ended up getting the 7th and final individual qualifying spot in 25:09. When a returning All-American barely gets in, you can’t be too disappointed by just missing it yourself.

All this is simply to say that the competition regionally and nationally is tougher than ever, and we are up for the challenge. I think we have a lot of positive momentum and took several steps forward as a program this fall. While we feel good about our racing this year and how our guys ran on the day at the conference and region meets, we feel even better about how we trained this summer/fall. And we aren’t content with 11th place as a team in the region either. After a couple weeks of downtime our guys are back at it and preparing for a great track season this spring.

A lot to look forward to for Vincent and our entire team, too. We will graduate just one from our top seven, senior Joe Gathje, as senior Eamon Cavanaugh has decided to come back for a 5th year next fall to use the eligibility he has from missing his 2023 season due to injury. If anyone has an NIL deal ready to go for Eamon, let us know… I’m kidding of course (kind of). Nevertheless, having our entire top six from this fall back next year has us very excited.

Seniors Eamon Cavanaugh & Joe Gathje taking it all in after their last* cross country race for SJU

*Not Eamon’s last cross country race for SJU, although he didn’t know that when this photo was taken as he did not decide to come back next year until a couple weeks later

I’ll be honest, I got a little emotional seeing this picture of seniors Joe & Eamon from after the region meet. First off, we have a great senior class this year. Holy cow have we been lucky to have Joe, Eamon and the other seniors not in this picture with us for four years. As always, it will be sad to see them go. But, even more than that, this picture brought me back to my last races for SJU and how special it is to line up and lay it all out there with your best friends and training partners week after week. Absolutely the best times of my life, and I’m glad to see our current guys cherishing and enjoying these moments as they live them.

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE

Aside from the banquet, which we just had this past Sunday, we completed just one other St. Michael’s Games event since my last update to you. I will include a recap of that event, the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament, below and leave the banquet recap for my next blog post.

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS SINGLE ELIMINATION TOURNAMENT

After it’s introduction to the St. Michael’s Games a few years ago, this event has quickly become one of the team’s favorites. Personally, I love the events that all of the guys really want to win, but they really don’t much control over whether they actually do win or not. You have to have a lot of luck on your side to win five straight Rock, Paper, Scissors games in a row.

With 31 guys on our team this fall, somebody had to get a first round bye. We thought it was most fair to give our defending champion, sophomore Cole Stencel, that benefit. After getting a pass through round one, Cole won his round two matchup against Eamon Cavanaugh with ease. However, in his next matchup, senior Nate Courchane came away victorious to prevent Cole from advancing to the final four. We would have a new Rock, Paper, Scissors Champion this year.

Nate himself would end up advancing to the Championship match against sophomore Lars Molenkamp (who is from just outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands). I’ll let you watch the video of the Championship Match below to find out who wins.

Lars Molenkamp (on left in tan jacket with arms raised)

2024 Rock, Paper, Scissors Champion

Heading into the banquet, here were the team scores and remaining events.

Team Scores (after eight events):

1st: Team Watab (26 points)
t-2nd: Los Comodores and Team Beans (24 points)
4th: Beginner’s Luck (14 points)

Team Beginner’s Luck’s name continues to do them no good.

Remaining Events:

Gingerbread House Decorating Contest
Show & Tell
One Act Play
IQ Review Trivia
Extra Sensory Perception

As always, thanks for reading and following along with our season. Banquet recap and track & field season preview coming next week!

Happy holidays,

Maxwell

MIAC Recap and Regions Preview

MIAC CHAMPIONSHIPS RECAP

2024 miac Runners up

A week or so removed from our runner-up finish at the conference meet, we are feeling very good about our performance while also holding strong in our belief that our best team race is still ahead of us. We finished 2nd at MIAC with 96 points, just ahead of Macalester (104 points) and Carleton (106 points).

Not that we pay too much attention to the regional rankings throughout the season, but all season long we were getting no love in the rankings. After beating Macalester at the Augustana meet in mid-October, I thought we’d definitely be added to the rankings as the second MIAC team, but Carleton ended up being ranked ahead of us heading into the conference meet. I was surprised, but honestly didn’t mind as it put a chip on our shoulder and gave us something to prove. We were confident we were the better team.

At the MIAC meet, Augsburg’s Mohammed Bati (the now three-time MIAC Cross Country Champion) took the race out at an honest pace, which I loved as I knew our guys were prepared to run a smart race. Our top five still ended up getting out in about 5:02-5:10 for the first mile, which was plenty fast. Then we got to work. As a team we were in 3rd place all the way through the 4 mile mark of the race, with Macalester in 2nd. Only being four points down to Macalester at that 4 mile mark, I was standing on the course with about 1,000 meters to go and made sure our guys knew that. Our top five ended up collectively passing six people in that last mile, and secured the runner-up finish.

We were led by sophomore Vincent Kaluza in 14th, earning All-MIAC honors, followed by a trio of All-MIAC Honorable Mention honorees in senior Eamon Cavanaugh in 17th, sophomore Cole Stencel in 19th and junior Aiden Chalmers in 23rd, with junior Nick St. Peter rounding out our top five in 30th. Junior Jacob Malecha and senior Joe Gathje were close behind as our sixth and seventh men in 33rd and 40th, respectively, as well.

25:38 Vincent Kaluza (14th)
25:44 Eamon Cavanaugh (17th)
25:52 Cole Stencel (19th)
25:58 Aiden Chalmers (23rd)
26:11 Nick St. Peter (30th)
26:15 Jacob Malecha (33rd)
26:35 Joe Gathje (40th)

It was our sixth time finishing in the top two as a team at the MIAC meet since 2000. Champions in 2006 and 2007, and Runners-up in 2015, 2016, 2022 and now 2024. And we’re not done yet! As I said above, we are very excited for the Region meet this weekend.

Results and photos from the MIAC meet are below, as well as a Region meet preview and Fall Finale recap. Full MIAC results here: Men's 8k - MIAC Championships - Nov 2, 2024 | Fast Finish Results

2024 MIAC Championships Team Results

FALL FINALE RECAP

We held our annual Fall Finale on campus last Friday evening for our non-regional guys to get one more race in for the season. It was a very small meet as Gustavus had to pull out at the last minute due to rampant sickness going through their team. This meant it was essentially just us plus an unattached athlete and one athlete from South Dakota State.

We were led by seniors Liam Sheeley, who is finally having the season we knew he was capable of after years of struggling with injuries, Ethan Leonard and AJ Skinner. Freshman Adam Marable and sophomore Peyton Martinek rounded out our top five for the clean sweep in this very competitive team race…

2024 Fall Finale Results

NCAA NORTH REGIONAL PREVIEW

Ever since the NCAA regions were re-aligned a few years ago putting us with the WIAC schools, we tell ourselves that if we aren’t able to run at the National meet then we were able to run in the 2nd most competitive meet in the country. Our region typically has the most team qualifiers for the National meet each year, and I’m expecting that to be the case this year as well.

We come into the meet ranked #10 in the region, with the following schools ranked nationally heading into the meet: UW-La Crosse at #1, UW-Whitewater #6, St. Olaf #9, UW-Eau Claire #22 and Carthage #30. UW-Stevens Point, Milwaukee School of Engineering and UW-Stout have also been ranked in the top 30 in the nation at different points throughout this season as well.

Our lineup for the Region meet will be as follows:

Eamon Cavanaugh, Sr.
Aiden Chalmers, Jr.
Joe Gathje, Sr.
Vincent Kaluza, So.
Jacob Malecha, Jr.
Nick St. Peter, Jr.
Cole Stencel, So.

Liam Sheeley, Sr. (alternate)
Max McCoy, So. (alternate)
Collin Berg, Fr. (alternate)

Carleton College is hosting the meet and the gun will go off for the men’s race at 12:00 PM. Women’s race is at 11:00 AM. Would love to see you there! There will not be a livestream of the meet, but you can follow the live results here: NCAA DIII North Regional Championships - Nov 16, 2024 | Fast Finish Results

BONUS MIAC PHOTOS

My eight-month-old daughter, Marais, cheering on the Bennies & Johnnies at her first MIAC Cross Country Championship meet.

MIAC Preview and Illinois Trip Recap

MIAC CHAMPIONSHIPS PREVIEW

Championship season is upon us, and we couldn’t be more excited for the gun to go off this Saturday at the MIAC Championships, which is at 11:00AM for the women and 12:00PM for the men at St. Olaf by the way. While we are a young team with just one senior in our top five, we have been running well this fall and I’m excited to see us mix it up with the rest of the conference.

St. Olaf once again has a very strong team this year, and the race between them, us, Carleton and Macalester is looking like it will be very exciting to watch. Our guys are healthy and feeling great, and I have all the trust in the world that they are going to execute a smart race. Then, we’ll see how the results shake out. Hope to see you there on Saturday!

And happy halloween!

-Maxwell

ILLINOIS TRIP RECAP

Two weeks ago we traveled to Rock Island, IL for Augustana College’s Interregional Invitational, which has become one of the “super meets” that teams travel to for their middle of October meet. They had two races, with our top 12 going in the “Gold” race and the rest of our team in the “Blue” race. Including us, there were 40 teams in the Gold race.

While we had never seen the course before, I assumed that if Augustana was allowing 40 teams of 12 guys each to all be in one race that the course would be wide enough to hold that many runners. Well, I was wrong. About 500m into the race the course narrowed significantly while athletes also had to dodge three different trees that were right in the middle of the course. This proved problematic for a field of over 400 runners. We managed to escape mostly unharmed, but with all the congestion the field got out to a relatively slow start.

Our guys moved up tremendously throughout the race, and we ended up finishing 17th ahead of UW-Oshkosh and Macalester who were both ranked ahead of us going into the meet. You can see the results from our top five above and the team standings below, as well as a few photos from the meet. Full results here.

FIELD OF DREAMS MOVIE SITE

On the way down to Augustana, we watched the movie Field of Dreams in preparation for our post-race stop at the actual location where the movie was filmed in Dyersville, Iowa. After some time in the cornfield and a few innings of pickup baseball, we were back on the bus and on our way back to SJU. A few funny photos and videos below, including an at-bat from our very own Tim Miles.

Freshman Colin Berg, still in uniform with his race bib on, throwing batting practice

“Shoeless Joe” Gathje at the plate

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE - PUMPKIN CARVING CONTEST

From left to right: 2nd place, 1st place, 3rd place, 4th place

In our last event before the grand finale that is the cross country banquet, where about half of the St. Michael’s Games events occur, we did a pumpkin carving contest earlier this week at practice. Each team got one knife, one pumpkin and 20 minutes to carve away. Tim and I served as the official judges and in the end it was the team Los Comodores who came away victorious with their carving of an SJU cross country singlet into their pumpkin. Photos of each team with their pumpkins are below.

1st Place - Los Comodores

SJU XC Singlet

2nd Place - Team Watab

“Dumbo”

3rd Place - Beginner’s Luck

Regular “Jack-O-Lantern”

4th Place - Team Beans

Impression of current junior Nick St. Peter after eating at the Reef

Hope to see you Saturday at the conference meet, but if nothing else you can follow along on the live results here as well: MIAC Championships - Nov 2, 2024 | Fast Finish Results

Maxwell

Eau Claire, Hall of Honor, Egg Toss - oh my!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in Collegeville with our third race of the season at the UW Eau Claire Blugold Invitational, Homecoming Weekend and the 2024 Hall of Honor ceremony, plus the latest St. Michael’s Games event of the season - the egg toss - all occurring since my last blog post. Recaps are below.

We are excited to head to Rock Island, Illinois this weekend for the Augustana Interregional Invitational where we will be competing against 42 other teams, with many of them ranked nationally. It will be a great chance for us to line up with some of the best teams in the country, plus it will be our first look at Macalester who I think we will be competing very closely with as we get into championship season here. And of course the guys always have a lot of fun on the overnight trips, too.

Enjoy the post below and I’ll talk to you in a couple weeks before the MIAC Championships!

-Maxwell

UW EAU CLAIRE BLUGOLD INVITATIONAL RECAP

2024 Blugold Invitational Results

2024 Blugold Invitational Team Results

First, we’ll start with a recap of the Eau Claire meet. The results for our top 5 are in the accompanying photo above, and the full results can be found here.

This was a very good step forward for us. Every single guy ran faster than they did two weeks ago at St. Olaf and over half the team ran all-time PRs. There may have been a 20ish degree swing in the weather from St. Olaf (in a good way), but Tim and I are just chalking up so many great performances to good coaching…

More so than the fast times everyone ran, because I am constantly trying to get guys away from paying too much attention to times in cross country due to the varying course conditions / course accuracy, what I was most proud of was HOW our guys ran and executed the race. All but two of our guys, who are both returning from injury and still getting their fitness back, finished higher up than they were at the one mile mark, and almost everybody’s last mile was faster than their first mile. Fantastic. Also a great sight to see was that 29 of our 31 guys on the team this fall raced — meaning only two were not able to race due to injury.

HOMECOMING WEEKEND & HALL OF HONOR INDUCTION

As many of you know, Homecoming weekend was a big weekend for us as we celebrated Tim, Chuck Ceronsky ‘70 and Mike Fahey’s ‘75 inductions into the SJU Hall of Honor. I was so excited to see so many alumni come back to partake in the weekend’s festivities, with around 50 alumni joining us at cross country practice that morning to interview Chuck & Tim and go for a run on campus (a few photo and video highlights below), as well as around another 40 alumni who were able to join us at the Hall of Honor dinner that evening. We are grateful to have so many supportive and involved alumni, and it was great to meet some of you who I had never met before. Each inductee was brought up onto stage for a 10ish minutes Q&A session, and you can watch each of Tim, Chuck and Mike’s daughter’s (who accepted the award on Mike’s behalf) time on stage at this video below.

Fast forward to the following times in the video for each inductee: Chuck 26:10, Mike 54:25 and Tim 1:33:55.

2024 Hall of Honor Induction Ceremony

And a few photos from the big day:

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE - egg toss

Perhaps the most prestigious event to win as well as the event with the most build up and fanfare preceding it every year is the Egg Toss. One of my favorite things about our program is that we (meaning Tim) have maintained our all-time best egg toss hang times list just as meticulously as our actual all-time fastest marks lists for each event in cross country and track & field. The egg toss list as it stands in 2024 is below:

In this year’s competition, we had our defending champions from last year Ethan Leonard and AJ Skinner (whose banquet award this year will have to be something related to Lynyrd Skynyrd I think…) looking to replicate their 2023 magic. However, recording the 11th best mark in egg toss history, sophomores Vincent Kaluza (Rocori) and Connor O’Brien (Belle Plaine) came away with the title with their toss of 3.27 seconds. Team wise, Team “Watab” again came away victorious with a total hang time from their team members of 9.42 seconds. It is also worth nothing that we had two winning pairs of our Bricks for Mitts Award this year — Aidan Thomas (Totino Grace) & AJ Karn (Wayzata) and Aiden Chalmers (Minnetonka) & Jaymis Bauer (Rocori). Both pairs dropped and broke their egg on their very first toss. Tim and I weren’t mad at them, just disappointed.

Liam Sheeley (Holy Angels) and Nick St. Peter’s (Maple Grove) Egg Toss

Aidan Thomas (Totino-Grace) and Joe Gathje (Bloomington Jefferson) Exhibition Toss

Nate Courchane (Park Center) & Liam Sheeley Exhibition Toss

After the main egg toss-ing was over, we still had seven eggs left and I had noticed on our all-time list that there was a section for the Exhibition Solo Toss, where a guy both throws and catches his egg, and the record was 2.59 by Phil Potvin in 1997. So, I opened it up to the guys to take a crack at it. First up was Joe Gathje and Max McCoy, neither of whom were able to successfully catch their egg. Next, Connor Dow and Aidan Thomas gave it a shot — both also unsuccessful. Then, Eamon Cavanaugh (Oak Park-River Forest, Ill.) gets up there and throws/catches his egg with a hang time of 2.84. School record! And the crowd goes wild! Sadly, Eamon’s record wouldn’t last too long as Ethan Leonard (Chaska) got up there immediately following Eamon and proceeded to successfully throw/catch his egg four times, each time beating Eamon’s new/old record — 3.00s, 3.25s, 3.41s and 3.43s. With all this being said, I have no idea if Phil Potvin reads this blog or not, but sorry Phil. Your record is toast! Rumor is that Ethan immediately called home to his parents to tell them the good news.

The first few Exhibition Solo Toss attempts by Joe Gathje, Max McCoy, Connor Dow and Aidan Thomas

Ethan Leonard’s record breaking Exhibition Solo Tosses

To take this eventful story a step further, after the guys were all done and were off on their run, Tim and I were cleaning up the egg cartons, etc. and noticed that there was in fact one more egg underneath one of the cartons that the guys apparently missed. After unsuccessfully trying to get Tim to do the egg toss with me to establish an official Coaches Record, I figured I might as well see what I can do in an Exhibition Solo Toss myself. I’ll let you all watch the video below (taken by a couple of our injured guys who weren’t running that day) to find out what my time was, and I’ll close this section of the blog with one of Tim’s quotes from after he went bowling with the team once and had the highest score — “of course I won, I’m the coach!”.

BONUS LAUGH #1

This first video is from Tim’s interview at practice on the morning of the Hall of Honor when somebody asked the question - “How do you sell a deaf man a chicken?” and Tim decided to tell an unsuspecting Chuck Ceronsky, fresh off his own interview, the answer.

BONUS LAUGH #2

The second video is also from our cross country practice on the morning of the Hall of Honor when, immediately upon arriving, Michael Collins ‘15, Charlie Raasch ‘18 and Tommy Feichtinger ‘15, who were all distance runners at SJU, decided it would be a good idea to race a 60m dash on the indoor track. Who knows how long it had been since any of them sprinted, and keep in mind that Tommy is our 1500m school record holder with his 3:48.46 from 2015. After you watch the video you’ll see just how significant Tommy’s fall from grace has been since graduating…

“I don’t move that fast anymore” - Tommy Feichtinger, October 2024

BONUS LAUGH #3

Tim’s commentary after a not very impressive exhibition egg toss…

RADIO INTERVIEWS on 2024 cc season

Lastly, myself, current senior Eamon Cavanaugh and current sophomore Vincent Kaluza have all been interviewed this fall by Mark Lewandowski from the local radio station WBHR “The Bear” AM660 for the Johnnie Magazine pre-game show that airs before SJU football games. I figured I’d attach the audio clips of those interviews if anyone cares to listen to us talk about the 2024 cross country season thus far. Each of the interviews are about 7 minutes long.

Homecoming Weekend & St. Michael’s Games Update

Go Johnnies Challenge Thank You!

First off, thank you so much to those of you who were able to support us during the Go Johnnies Challenge. Every year we are blown away by how supportive and generous our alumni are, and we are very lucky and grateful to have you all behind us. Your support will go a long way in helping to continue to provide a great experience for our athletes, starting with new cross country uniforms and warmups for our team this fall as well as our overnight trip to Illinois in a couple of weeks for this year’s Augustana Interregional Invitational with our entire team, which will be one of the best meets in the country.

St. Olaf Invitational Recap

The season is off and running (no pun intended), and we had our first 8K of the season about two weeks ago at St. Olaf. We were missing a couple of folks due to injury/illness, and it was an incredibly warm day for our first 8K of the season hovering around 80 degrees, but overall it was a very solid result for us finishing in 4th as a team while also getting a preview of the course for this year’s MIAC Championships later this season. You can see a screenshot of the team results below, as well as a few pictures from the meet where we debuted our new cross country uniforms.

J Club Hall of Honor & Homecoming Festivities

In addition to our next meet at the UW-Eau Claire Blugold Invitational this Friday evening, which we are very much looking forward to as Eau Claire is one of the best courses we will run on this season, this should also be a very fun weekend as we induct Tim Miles ‘76, Chuck Ceronsky ‘70 and Mike Fahey ‘75 into the St. John’s J-Club Hall of Honor on Saturday evening (October 5th). The evening kicks off at 5:00pm in Guild Hall and features dinner/drinks and a short induction presentation and Q&A session with all 13 of SJU’s 2024 inductees. Registration is still open and you can sign-up to attend here: 2024 Hall of Honor (csbsju.edu).

The festivities for us will begin earlier that day, though, because as I mentioned in an earlier blog post this fall, we’d like to invite ALL alumni to come and join us at our cross country practice on Saturday morning at 9:00AM in the indoor track to “interview” both Tim and Chuck Ceronsky with our current team members before either going for a run on campus or staying back and socializing with Tim and Chuck if a run is not of interest to you. I’d imagine a group of us will venture up to the Refectory for breakfast afterwards as well, and between the SJU Football game vs. Augsburg and many other Homecoming festivities, there will be plenty to do up here between practice and the official Hall of Honor dinner later that evening.

I have heard from quite a few alumni who have told me they will be at practice as well as the dinner, and I’m looking forward to what should be a very fun weekend of celebration.

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE

We have done two additional St. Michael’s Games events since my last blog post: Golf and the Home Run Derby.

We did 18 x 400m at 5K pace with 60 seconds recovery for our Golf Workout, and experience paid off big time this year as senior Aidan Thomas came away as our King of Good Pace with a score of 7 after all 18 reps. Believe it or not, there were quite a few guys who in years past would’ve put themselves in great position to be our Duffer, also known as King of Bad Pace, but when it was all said and done it was freshmen Sebastian Hanson who earned the Duffer title with a score of 36.

Our winning team was Team Beans with an average score of 14 amongst their team members, which at first glance Tim and I were sort of disappointed by, but, after thinking about it, an average of less than 1 second off per rep for your whole team isn’t so bad.

Our 2024 Golf Champion and King of Good Pace, senior Aidan Thomas, as he finishes his 18th rep and secures the title.


This year’s Home Run Derby was shaping up to be quite the competition with our top 3 sluggers from last year all returning in defending champion Vincent Kaluza, runner-up Nate Courchane and last year’s 3rd place finisher Ethan Leonard. In keeping with tradition we had our defending champ, Vincent, go last to make sure there was the proper amount of hype and pressure on him to defend his title, and at the end of the day it was not meant to be. Coming out of nowhere, freshman Connor Dow won the Sultan of Swat title with 10 home runs and 19 runs batted in. His St. Michael’s Games teammate Ethan Leonard was close behind with 9 home runs and 15 RBIs, and another freshman, Collin Berg, rounded out our podium with 8 HRs and 19 RBIs.

Special shoutout to senior AJ Skinner who hit his very first home run during the home run derby this year after three previous years of coming up short. What an accomplishment.

Our 2024 Home Run Derby Champion and Sultan of Swat, freshman Connor Dow, with his teammates after the HR Derby in what has annually become our most awkward team photo.

After five events, our team scores are as follows:

t-1st: Team Beans & Team Watab (17 points)
2nd: Los Comodores (12 points)
3rd: Beginner’s Luck (9 points)




If we don’t see you this weekend, I hope to see you up on campus another time in the near future and hope you have a great weekend yourself!

-Maxwell

First Race Recap & Go Johnnies Challenge

2ND ANNUAL TONI ST. PIERRE INVITATIONAL RECAP

We opened our season this past Friday with a 5K at Boulder Ridge Golf Course in St. Cloud, and I’ve listed the results below. Obviously a lot more to look forward to in the season ahead, but this was a great start to our season with many guys running PRs and several freshmen obliterating their high school 5K PR. We were led by senior Eamon Cavanaugh in 15:34, sophomore Vincent Kaluza in 15:36, sophomore Cole Stencel in 15:40, junior Nick St. Peter in 15:43 and senior Dylan Bartness in 15:48. We knew we’d have a big pack up front, but weren’t exactly sure how it’d shake out between the guys. Excited to get on with the rest of the season and give our guys 3,000 more meters to work with!

Wisconsin-Stout is a good team, ranked #25 in the NCAA, and Bethel will have a good 1-2 punch this fall with returner Grant Graber and freshman Hootie Hage, so it was great to get a chance to see how we measured up this early in the season with a lowkey meet. It will be exciting to get the opportunity to race these teams again over 8,000m later this season, including at our next meet — the St. Olaf Invitational on Saturday, September 21st — which will also give us a preview of the course that this year’s MIAC Championship will be run on. Photo highlights below (click to enlarge).

Thanks to all the alums that came out to watch the meet last Friday and enjoy some pizza after the races!

GO JOHNNIES CHALLENGE - THIS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12!!

Our annual Go Johnnies Challenge athletic department fundraiser is coming up tomorrow (Thursday 9/12), and we are always so grateful for the tremendous alumni support we receive for cross country and track & field. You may have read Jeremy’s blog post from last week already but, in short, we literally could not do what we do without your support. In addition to just simply helping us carry one of the largest teams, both in cross country and track & field, in the conference, here is a glimpse of the other things the funds from the Go Johnnies Challenge have gone towards the last couple years that we otherwise would not have been able to do / purchase:

  • New uniforms and warmups

  • Travel to out-of-state meets, such as Oregon in the fall of 2021 and Pennsylvania in the fall of 2023, as well as our annual trip to the Bryan Clay Invitational in Los Angeles, CA during the track & field season

  • Light Speed Lift anti-gravity / body-weight-support treadmill system, becoming one of the only programs in MN to have one

  • Our annual (from now on) pre-season training camp trip for cross country (our Itasca State Park trip this year)

  • School record board in the indoor track

Here is the link to donate: 2024 Go Johnnies Challenge · GiveCampus. The big day is not officially until tomorrow (Thursday) but you can donate anytime, and a special shoutout to Chris Lee and Jerome and Laura Colbert who have already committed to very generous matching gifts. Thanks in advance for the support!

And now for an inside look at the watermelon eating contest from our Itasca training camp a couple weeks ago, and another look at the ill-fated start of our canoe relay from last year (which is still quite funny one year later and worth another watch).

Maxwell

Race Week & Itasca Training Camp Highlights

If you haven’t already, follow us on Instagram at: @johnnietfxc

JOIN US AT OUR SEASON & home OPENER THIS FRIDAY!

Hope you can make it to our 2nd annual Toni St. Pierre Invitational at Boulder Ridge Golf Course in St. Cloud this Friday evening! Alumni are welcome to spectate or race, and then join us for post-race food and good times at the golf course clubhouse after the races are over. Women’s 5K is at 6:00pm and Men’s 5K is at 6:45pm. We will be joined by UW Stout, Bethel, UW Superior, Augsburg and Northwestern. With all of our top returners scheduled to race on a fast course and many others looking very fit and ready to race after big summers of training, it should be a fun evening to kick our season off with. Enjoy some highlights from our training camp at Itasca State Park and the first couple St. Michael’s Games events below, and hope to see you on Friday!

Also, for a great read on who Toni St. Pierre (CSB ‘77) was, click here: Toni St. Pierre Just Wanted to Run - RUN | Powered by Outside (outsideonline.com) and here: CSB trailblazer and Title IX honoree, Toni St. Pierre will be featured in upcoming book - College of Saint Benedict Athletics (gobennies.com).

Your 2024 Saint John’s Cross Country team (minus a few) at Itasca State Park.

Itasca state park training camp

We enjoyed four days of some great running in and around Itasca State Park, highlighted by a “magical” (in Tim’s words) long run on our last morning there with a solid group of guys going 16.5 miles and the rest of the team going anywhere from 9-13 miles. The main drive around the perimeter of the park provided a great route that was not only beautiful but also, and more importantly, hard for anyone to get lost on as there were really no other turns or roads to mistakenly go onto. Aside from some great training, the trip was highlighted by lots of lawn games, swimming, volleyball and s’mores over the bonfire. This year was our first year doing an off-campus preseason training camp, and I think it will be a new annual tradition. It’s nice to spend a few days together right away to kick off the season before the craziness of freshmen orientation and the beginning of the school year. A few photo highlights below.

Shots of some of the beautiful Itasca scenery throughout our daily training runs.

St. Michael’s Games Event #1 - Mini Golf

Kicked off the trip and our 2024 St. Michael’s Games by stopping in Baxter, MN on the way to Itasca for a round of mini-golf. Low-score on the team was 41 (+1) by senior A.J. Skinner. Although, a certain coach whose name rhymes with Kaxwell Muzara shot 38 (-2)…

St. Michael’s Games Event #2 - Watermelon Eating Contest

Our 2nd St. Michael’s Games event of the year was the very popular watermelon eating contest. The watermelons were a bit smaller this year, and thus the competition was fierce. Each team had to choose three representatives, or “eaters” if you will, from their team, and in the end the team who chose two freshmen to be eaters took home the W in a time of 6:27.5 — 3rd on the all-time list behind last year’s 1st and 2nd place teams. Congrats to Jaymis Bauer, Aiden Chalmers and Miguel Gaspar-Ramirez for taking home the hardware and, most importantly, the five points for their St. Michael’s Games team.

Miscellaneous Itasca shenanigans.

St. Michael’s Games Event #3 - Canoe Relay on Lake Sag

Upon returning to campus we squeezed in our canoe relay to the chapel and back on Lake Sagatagan on campus. Four team members from each St. Michael’s Games team who did not participate in the watermelon eating contest race to the chapel and back, with two starting at the beach and two waiting out at the chapel. Once the first two get to the chapel, they switch and the second two head back towards the beach. Despite getting to the chapel in 2nd before turning around to head to the beach, the team of Sam Rabaey, Ethan Leonard, AJ Skinner and Cole Stencel (pictured above) took home the win in 13:14.9, just off the all-time record of 13:10.2 from last year set by Vincent Kaluza, Jacob Malecha, AJ Karn and Joe Coffey.

St. Michael’s Games Team Scores

After three events, the team scores are as follows:

1st: 10 points - Beans
2nd: 9 points - Team #4
t-3rd: 7 points - Beginner’s Luck / Los Comodores

24/7/365 Apparel Store

Lastly, for anyone who missed out on the apparel orders these last couple weeks, or if you just want more SJU CC / T&F gear (because who doesn’t?!), a reminder that this store is open 24/7/365 and has all sorts of apparel, coffee mugs, blankets, etc.: SJU Johnnies Cross Country Custom Apparel and Merchandise - Game One (game-one.com)

Hope to see you this Friday evening at the Toni St. Pierre meet, or on October 5th for Tim and Chuck Ceronsky’s SJU Hall of Honor induction.

Go Johnnies,

Maxwell

Time Trial Results & Apparel Reminder

TIME TRIAL RESULTS & APPAREL REMINDER

Our team moved back into campus yesterday, and we ran our traditional season-opening time trial on the Wobegon this morning before we head off to Itasca State Park tomorrow for an off-campus team training camp, which will be a first for SJU cross country. Time trial results are below, as well as a reminder to get your apparel orders in as our apparel stores close tomorrow, August 18th at midnight.

TIME TRIAL RESULTS

It was a beautiful 65 degree, overcast morning here in Collegeville for our time trial on the Wobegon Trail. About one-third of our team did not run, including three returners from last fall’s top 7 — sophomore Vincent Kaluza, who ran 15:03 for 5K as a freshman last spring on the track (SJU’s fastest 5K by a freshmen since 1989) and has a nasty cold right now, junior Aiden Chalmers, who was our #3 man at the region meet last fall and is returning from an Achilles injury, and sophomore Max McCoy, who was our 7th man at the region meet last fall and is a trip leader for Collegebound — CSB+SJU’s annual trip to the Boundary Waters for incoming freshmen. Otherwise, a few others have yet to get back to campus, such as our Lars Molenkamp from the Netherlands who is traveling back to campus as I type this, as well as a few who are returning from injury/currently injured.

At the beginning of the summer, we give everyone a time standard to hit that is approximately 1 minute slower than their previous best, or equivalent thereof, to therefore display that they have done the training necessary in June, July and August to be successful in October and November. Some guys choose to all-out race this time trial, others just do what they need to do to hit their time standard and move on. Regardless, here are the results:

15:10 JR Nick St. Peter
15:14 SR Dylan Bartness
15:16 SR Eamon Cavanaugh
15:16 SO Cole Stencel
15:57 SO Peyton Martinek
16:08 FR Collin Berg
16:11 JR Jacob Malecha
16:13 SR Joe Gathje
16:17 SR AJ Skinner
17:04 FR Connor Dow
17:06 FR Jaymis Bauer
17:12 SO Colin Kaster
17:28 FR Adam Marable
17:29 FR Miguel Gaspar-Ramirez
17:43 SR AJ Karn
18:13 SO Jack Johnston
18:34 SR Sam Rabaey
18:54 SO Jack Montgomery
18:58 SO Gavin Swift
19:22 SR Nate Courchane
22:24 FR Sebastian Hanson
DNS JR Aiden Chalmers
DNS SO Aaron Freier
DNS SO Vincent Kaluza
DNS SR Ethan Leonard
DNS SO Max McCoy
DNS SO Lars Molenkamp
DNS SO Connor O’Brien
DNS FR AJ Olesen
DNS FR Evan Raske
DNS SR Liam Sheeley
DNS SR Aidan Thomas

APPAREL STORES CLOSE TOMORROW, AUGUST 18

A final reminder to get your Saint John’s Cross Country apparel at the below links before the end of the day tomorrow, Sunday, August 18th.

Store #1 (ships to you): Saint John's Cross Country 2024 Apparel Store

Store #2 (ships to me at SJU, but I can ship back out to you): Saint John's Cross Country 2024 Apparel Store #2 - Custom Running Gear

Vintage Saint John’s CC Route Shirts: https://forms.gle/rwoGM6CPYUMmwtZE7

The items in Store #2 have a minimum that need to be ordered in order to get the stuff printed, and we are dangerously close to not meeting that minimum - just in case anyone was on the fence about one of those items.

We’ll talk to you all next week with some highlights from our team trip to Itasca State Park!

-Maxwell

2024 Cross Country Apparel Order

Links to our team apparel stores for this year are below. Both stores close on August 18th.

Regular team apparel store

These items should arrive within 2-4 weeks after the store closes and are available for you to have shipped to you. Here is the link to order: Saint John's University Cross Country Store

custom team apparel store

We also have this separate apparel store for custom adidas running gear. I’ve been told that it is adidas’ nicer running stuff. It had to be a separate order because these items are custom made (adidas doesn’t regularly stock the SJU light blue colored items) and they will take approximately 6 weeks to be delivered. Adidas will be bulk shipping everything together that is purchased from this store to me at SJU, but if you want to order something from this store I am happy to ship it out to you once I receive it if you provide me with your address and the shipping costs. Email me your shipping address if you order something from here (mskuzara@csbsju.edu). Here is the link to order: Custom Saint John's University Cross Country Store

A quick note — the light blue “Adizero Essential Running Jacket” also has “Saint John’s” across the back of the jacket.

saint john’s cross country route shirts

Some of you may remember the original blue long sleeve shirts that were made “back in the day”, which I believe were designed by Charlie Mahler ‘85, that list some of the main routes that the team ran down the back of it. We are remaking these as well as a hooded sweatshirt version that lists some of the more current routes down the back, and you are welcome to order either one or both if you’d like. I will mail them out to you. $20 for the long sleeve and $35 for the hooded sweatshirt — shipping costs are included in those prices. These are not a fundraiser for the team, the prices are simply the cost of the printing plus shipping. Here is the order form: Route Shirt Order Form. Orders due by August 18th.

- Maxwell

Questions? Let me know: mskuzara@csbsju.edu

Missed our blog post from last week? Read here: Summer Check-In and Important Upcoming Dates — SJU Johnnies Cross Country

Follow Johnnie Cross Country and Track & Field on Instagram

Alumni Facebook group
Alumni facebook page
sju track & field coach's blog
SJU cc/t&f apparel

Get in touch with the Coaches

Jeremy Karger-Gatzow
Head Track & Field Coach
jkargerga001@csbsju.edu

Tim Miles
Head Coach Emeritus
tmiles@csbsju.edu

Maxwell Kuzara
Head CC / Asst. T&F Coach
mskuzara@csbsju.edu

Previous Blog Posts
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MIAC Championships Preview, Egg Toss, Pumpkin Carving Contest
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Home Run Derby and Homecoming Weekend
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MIAC Preview, Golf Workout and Go Johnnies Challenge
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Training Camp, Toni St. Pierre Invitational, Important Dates
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2025 Cross Country Apparel Order
Fantastic 4x800 and Outdoor MIAC Preview
Fantastic 4x800 and Outdoor MIAC Preview
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Fantastic 800s, Drake Relays, Survey Reminder
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Fantastic 5Ks and Alumni Testimonials Survey
Indoor Season Recap & Outdoor Preview
Indoor Season Recap & Outdoor Preview
Cross Country Banquet Recap & Indoor Alumni Meet
Cross Country Banquet Recap & Indoor Alumni Meet
Regions Recap & St. Michael's Games Update
Regions Recap & St. Michael's Games Update
MIAC Recap and Regions Preview
MIAC Recap and Regions Preview
MIAC Preview and Illinois Trip Recap
MIAC Preview and Illinois Trip Recap
Eau Claire, Hall of Honor, Egg Toss - oh my!
Eau Claire, Hall of Honor, Egg Toss - oh my!
Homecoming Weekend & St. Michael’s Games Update
Homecoming Weekend & St. Michael’s Games Update
Go Johnnies Challenge Live From CC Practice
Go Johnnies Challenge Live From CC Practice
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First Race Recap & Go Johnnies Challenge
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Race Week & Itasca Training Camp Highlights
Time Trial Results & Apparel Reminder
Time Trial Results & Apparel Reminder
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2024 Cross Country Apparel Order
Summer Check-In and Important Upcoming Dates
Summer Check-In and Important Upcoming Dates
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NCAA Championships Preview & St. Michael's Games Update
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Long time no talk! NCAA North Region Preview
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St. Michael’s Games Update, Alumni Meet, and Go Johnnies Challenge
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A Message from Tim & Maxwell
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MIAC Championships
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MIAC Cross Country Championship- Back In St. Paul
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Thank You For Your Generosity
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Go Johnnie Challenge
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5k Boulder Ridge Results