In dominating fashion, the Illinois men’s cross country captured a first-place finish on Saturday in the Pack-It-Up Challenge at the Arboretum, defeating Illinois State and Loyola.

The Illini swept the top-10, winning the race with 15 points. Senior Eric Wallor, who completed the 8k race with a time of 25:43, led the way for Illinois. Wallor overcame sophomore Maciej Sniegorski, who led for a majority of the race, with about a quarter mile to go.

“The third mile came around, and then we got to the fourth mile, I decided to go for it, I was feeling pretty good,” Wallor said. “Mike Kelley and Tim Kelly were pushing me pretty well; we were getting closer and closer to Maciej. We just kept building up and finally caught him with 400-500 meters to go.”

This is Wallor’s second first place finish for the Illini this season; he came in first at the Hawkeye Invite on Sept. 2.

Sniegorski and sophomore Tim Kelly finished in second and third places, with times of 25:50 and 25:51, respectively. Sophomore Michael Kelley clocked in at 25:53, grabbing fourth place, while Justin Aronson finished four seconds later, and rounded out the top-five.

“Majiec got out there a little bit by himself, put himself out there, almost like a target,” head coach Wendel McRaven said. “That’s the best college cross country race he’s ever run. Last year he had a rough year.”

Making his Illini coaching debut at the home meet, McRaven was impressed with his team’s performance, even though they did not start out as fast as he would have liked.

“We do need to get used to a little bit faster early pace, which will come as their fitness improves and that will come naturally,” he said. “Plus the next couple times we race we’re going to have much better competition.”

The Illini hope their home course and the Pack-It-Up Challenge could become a site for competitive racing in the future. McRaven said he is excited to bring this meet to the forefront of running.

“I’ve already talked to some coaches around the state, around the region, for the next couple years to try to make this into a bigger meet,” McRaven said.

The men’s cross country team’s goal in practice and in racing continues to be pack running, which they hope will bring good things.

“If you practice it in a race, then it will help as you get into the future, bigger races, where we’re together and running faster together,” Wallor said.

“One of the keys to being successful is to have that spread be tight,” McRaven said. “There’s knowing what to do, and there’s actually being able to do it, the fluid knowledge of being able to do it, execute it in a competition, that’s what they’ve been able to do here.”

The men will compete again on Oct. 1 in the Loyola Lakefront Challenge in Chicago.

“The next two weeks we will be focusing on training and building for the future,” McRaven said. “The Lakefront invitational will be a good meet, a decent interregional competition; it’s a chance for our guys to get used to having some competition.”