A Record-Setting Meet for IHCC in Illinois

Rock Island, IL -- Following their previous meet in Ames, Indian Hills men's cross country coach Jim Streeby said he was looking forward to having his top five runners get their average time under 30 minutes. The Warriors made their coach very heppy with their performance in the Brissman-Lundeen Invitational, hosted by Augustana University on Friday.

In what Streeby described as "a total team effort," the top five IHCC finishers averaged 29:22, shattering the previous school record set the week before. Six different Warriors ran personal-bests in the 8K race that featured some 400 men's runners and a similar number of women's contestants.

Sophomore co-captain Jon Gerling lowered his school record for the 8K distance for the third time this fall, running 26:53. That was 1:42 faster than Gerling's time in this meet last year.

Freshman Glen Morgan took 27 seconds off his personal-best with a time of 29:07. Morgan was followed closely by sophomore co-captain Steele Fiscus who dropped his PR by nearly a minute with a time of 29:19.

Danny Schieffer, a freshman, dropped his PR by just over a minute, finishing in 29:26. The fifth-best runner for the Warriors was freshman Marcus Clark, who ran 32:07, 42 seconds better than his previous fastest time.

The other IHCC runner to set a personal-best was Keenan Wyngarden, who ran 33:29, 57 seconds better than his time in the same meet in 2009. Lucas Brightwell was sixth for Indian Hills with his time of 32:59. Zakk Ellingson ran 33:57 for the Warriors.

Streeby said he had stressed pace control to his runners in practice last week, asking them to try and run their first mile at a pace they would want to run for the entire race, or even slighly slower. He noted that every runner except one ran the last half of the race faster than the first half.

And after he saw his runners turn in their best performance so far this season, Streeby said, "I had a smile on my face the whole ride home."

Indian Hills will run again in the Dan Huston Invitational in Waverly on Oct. 9.