Gerling Leads IHCC Men at Grinnell

Grinnell - Jon Gerling turned in his third straight strong performance to lead the Indian Hills men's cross country team at the Les Duke Invitational on Saturday. Gerling turned in a time of 27:35 over the 8K course at the Oakland Acres Golf Course. Gerling was 31st in a field that included 11 four-year schools. His time set an IHCC record for 8,000 meters. It was 17 seconds faster than the previous record. Gerling also did significantly better than the year before at the same meet when he was 50th in 28:09.

Glen Morgan and Steele Fiscus were separated by only four seconds as they were the second and third IHCC runners. Morgan's time of 30:20 was good for 81st place; Fiscus was 82nd and made a huge improvement from the Grinnell race the year before, running 2:24 faster over the 8K course, the first time the IHCC freshmen had run that distance.

The next four IHCC runners finished in 92nd-through-95th place. Jordan Bradfield, according to IHCC coach Jim Streeby, was a surprise, hanging around near the back of the field for over half the race and then "kicking it into high gear," in Streeby's words, to finish in 33:06.

Marcus Clark was the last scoring runner for the Warriors in a time of 33:18. Streeby says Clark is "working hard in practice and will continue to improve."

Lucas Brightwell ran 34:37, a time that was a 33-second improvement over last year. And Zakk Ellingson (34:49) was right behind Brightwell.

The Warriors combined time and average per top 5 runners was 30:56. That broke the old IHCC record, set two years ago at the Grinnell meet. The coach's goal is to have five runners under 30:00.

Indian Hills will run in a meet in Ames this Saturday.