Men's Results: Team | Individual
Women's Results: Team | Individual

WEST SALEM, Wis. — With the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championships just two weeks away, Saint Mary's University cross country coach Ward Berndt was eager to see how his Cardinals stacked up against the rest of the conference teams when they toed the line for the Jim Drews/Tori Neubauer Invitational Saturday morning.

And if the Cardinals team finishes were any indication, SMU stacks up quite well.

The Cardinal men got a career-best eight-kilometer time of 26:00 from sophomore Aaron Haley (Plainview, Minn.) en route to a 16th-place finish in the 26-team Jim Drews Field, while the SMU women, behind Katie Stolz's (Forest Lake, Minn.) 23:52 6K effort, placed 18th in the 26-team Tori Neubauer Invitational field.

"It was a good day all the way around," said SMU coach Ward Berndt, noting that Haley's 8K performance was the fastest time in program history, while Stolz's 6K time was fourth-best all-time. "We had some great individual efforts, and overall, both teams competed very well.

"We were hoping to get an idea where we stacked up with the rest of the teams in the conference, and I think we did that today. It could be a very interesting conference meet in two weeks."

Along with Haley's career effort, Peter Borash (Bowlus, Minn.) chipped in a time of 26:27 to place 52nd and Jake Traxler (Le Center, Minn.) was the third Cardinal across the finish line in 26:39 for 68th.  Jase Pater (Adrian, Minn.) and John Soucheray (Woodbury, Minn.) rounded out the Cardinal men's top five, posting times of 27:26 and 27:48, respectively.

Host UW-La Crosse, placing four runners in the top 10, captured the men's team title, finishing 66 points in front of runner-up UW-Platteville. Central-Iowa was third, with Iowa Central College and St. Olaf placing fourth and fifth, respectively.

Iowa Central's Stanley Kebenei outkicked the rest of the men's field to win the individual title, posting a meet-best 24:45 8K time. Central-Iowa's Eli Horton edged St. Olaf's Grant Wintheiser by one-hundreth of a second to place second in 25:13.

On the women's side, Kristen Thelen (Rochester, Minn.) was second to Stolz with a 6K time of 24:40, while Allie Thiel (Burr Ridge, Ill.) added a 25:03, and Katherine Mockler (Dubuque, Iowa) and Clare Siska (Rochester, Minn.) finished in 25:09 and 25:17, respectively, to round out SMU's top five.

The University of Minnesota capture the Tori Neubauer team title, edging Wartburg by 17 points, while Iowa Central College was third, St. Olaf was fourth and Luther was fifth.

Alana Enabnit of Wartburg earned individual honors, breaking the tape in 21:41, with St. Olaf's Jorden Johnson and Emma Lee taking second and third with times of 21:54 and 22:04, respectively.

The Cardinals are now off until Oct. 27, when they take part in the MIAC Championships at Como Park Golf Course in St. Paul, Minn.