The Illinois State mens and womens cross country teams had great showings at the 31st annual Sean Earl Loyola Lakefront Invite Saturday, as the women placed fifth and the men were sixth.
Diana Ainsley led the way overall for the women, as she finished 17th overall in the 5K with a time of 18:07, which is a new personal best for the junior from Palatine, Ill.
Ainsley was followed in the scoring by Lauren Ritt (31st overall), Laura Kennedy (33rd), Jen Klosterman (37th) and Leah Smith (59th). Other Redbird women competing were Maureen Nelligan (135th) and Ashley Boller (155th)
Illinois State cross country coach Chris Bailey was more than pleased with the way the women competed against some of the best runners in the country.
All of our girls ran an outstanding race," said Bailey. You start at the top and see what Diana did today, which was run her best race ever as a Redbird. To come home with a fifth place finish in this event tells us that were on the right track as we strive for our ultimate goal of winning the conference.
On the mens side, Jeremy Doherty was the top Redbird finisher for the third time this year, as he finished 14th with a time of 25:12 in the 8k. Doherty set a new personal best for himself in the 8K, as he bettered his previous best time by 45 seconds.
Also scoring for the men were Walker Eye (30th), Allan Kipchoge (57th), Walter Ogola (69th), and Mike Estlund (89th). Other men competing were Dan Tripp (93rd) and Greg Baker (97th).
Our mens team is finally starting to come around, said Bailey. We started slow this year, but we showed we can compete with some of the best in the country today.
As for the three week layoff his teams were coming off of, Bailey feels like the improvements made over that stretch were noticeable in there performance in Chicago.
The biggest thing you noticed was on the hills, said Bailey. As both our men and women were heading up a hill, you could very clearly see that the Illinois State runners were the ones doing the passing and not the ones falling to the back of the pack.
Illinois State will be in action next weekend at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.
