Pioneers finish strong 2nd at Pre-Regionals in MN

Above: Sam Calisch. '10, Henry Reich, '09 and Nick Sparr '09 race through the 2 mile mark at the Pre-Regional meet. They would finish 16th, 7th and 24th respectively in the meet.

Finishing just 1 second behind the individual winner, Drake Ballew '08 brought home a second-place finish to help lead the Grinnell College men's cross country team to a second-place team finish at the Pre-Regional Invite at St. Olaf College (MN).with 45 points. Carleton College took the team title with 35 points.

Ballew crossed the finish line in a time of 26:14 with teammate Charlie Knuth '08 finishing sixth in a time of 26:59. Henry Reich '09 also turned in a top-ten performance by coming in seventh with a time of 27:14.

David Montgomery '10 (27:53) took 14th, Sam Claisch '10 (27:38) finished 16th, while Nick Sparr '09 (28:22) and Mike Horrell '09 (28:45) round out the top runners with their 24th and 30th-place finishes respectively.

Coach Will Freeman was optimistic about the performance, "We ran much better than two weeks ago at Griak. The training is really starting to show and we are not backing off at all for these races. We had a very tough Sunday and Tuesday workouts leading into this meet and it showed a bit, but the team also showed that they are improving by a lot. This was a tough and slow course. I'm proud of their effort today. They came close to winning this meet. Our choices of meets this year have leaned toward more difficult courses and I think that will pay off for us in November."

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