Warriors Run at Nationals

Spartanburg, S.C. -- The Indian Hills men’s cross country team ended their season at the NJCAA National Meet in Spartanburg, S.C. last weekend. The Warriors finished in 34th place and had one runner finish with a personal-best time.

Henry Majin, a freshman from Ottumwa, cut over a minute off his previous best time and finished 5th among the IHCC runners in 31:43.

Indian Hills was led, as they were all season long, by sophomore Jon Gerling (Winfield). He ran 27:23, 30 seconds faster than his time at nationals last year, and wound up in 100th place. Gerling was 14th among the 42 runners from Iowa schools at the meet.

Freshman Glen Morgan (Winfield) finished the 8K course in 29:11, only four seconds off his personal best. Danny Schieffer (Columbus Junction) moved up to third on the Warriors with a time of 29:48, just ahead of teammate Steele Fiscus (Union), who ran 29:50.

Freshman Marcus Clark (Fairfield) rounded out the IHCC participants with a time of 32:25.

Coach Jim Streeby had hoped going into the race that, based on 2009 National Meet results, his squad would place in the middle of the team competition, maybe get a few PR’s and have five runners under 30:00.

“Physically, we were ready to run well,” said Streeby, “and I’m not sure why, but we seemed to lose our mental focus. So I think you have to use it as a learning process. However, even if every one of our runners had hit their PR, we would have only moved up to 32nd place in the team race.”

Streeby stressed there were some positives in the 2010 season. “The men’s team ended up as the fastest ever at Indian Hills with a 29:22 average for the top five runners. Jon Gerling lowered his own school record three times, down to 26:53. That’s a minute faster than Jon ran last year which is a very good improvement in a year.”

Gerling and Fiscus were the two sophs on this year’s team and Streeby mentioned what a pleasure it was to work with them the past two seasons.