Women’s cross country head coach Karen Harvey called Friday’s race in South Bend, Ind., a “historic day.” Illinois upset six nationally ranked teams, captured a second-place finish when it competed in its first appearance at the Notre Dame Invitational and established themselves as a threat for the Pre-National meet and Big Ten Championships later this month.

“It’s a wonderful day for the program,” Harvey said. “It (this performance) says that we’ve arrived.”

The Illini came into the meet ranked No. 20, and most notably overcame host and third-ranked Notre Dame, No. 10 Arkansas and No. 12 Wake Forest. Illinois only fell to defending Big Ten champion Michigan (No. 5), as they finished with 82 team points to the Wolverines’ 77.

Harvey said she told her team that if they back down now, “they will be dead, since Michigan is going to be training harder.” Harvey promised that she would have her team fired up for upcoming meets.

The eight Illini runners each finished the race with a new personal best, while junior Cassie Hunt in her season debut, led the Illini with a time of 16:52 and a fifth-place finish overall for the 5k race. Hunt’s time put her in third-place all-time in the Illinois record books for 5k performances. From watching Hunt in training, Harvey though knows she can run times in the 16:20s, she said.

Junior Stephanie Simms also raced for the first time this season, and destroyed her old personal record by 52 seconds. Simms finished in seventh with a time of 17:07.

“Stephanie Simms had an awesome day; she has started to get serious, and has started believing in herself,” Harvey said.

Simms agreed with Harvey, and admitted that she was going not running for place, but aiming for under-17 minutes.

Katie Engel and Liz Mengyan, both freshman, made their Illini debuts finishing with times of 17:36 and 18:10, respectively. The sophomore trio of Maggie Carroll, Katie Coppin and Rachel Hernandez finished in 21st, 23rd and 46th place.

“As an individual, I was established the first two miles, but I was not happy with the ending,” Carroll said.

Although Harvey was pleased with one of the Illini’s biggest races in years, she said the outcome of the race should have been different, knowing what could have been. Harvey admitted that as she watched the race, she only saw what was going wrong, as opposed to what was done well.

“They didn’t finish the race; with three to four minutes to go, they weren’t concentrating, they started to fall back,” Harvey said. “We had that race won, I didn’t like seeing that; it bothered me.”

From the good and bad she witnessed on Friday, Harvey and the team knows what they plan to work on.

“We need to work on finishing our race, and competing the entire race,” Simms said. “We are running well, but if we want to beat Michigan at Big Ten’s, we need to do the little things.”

Carroll said the little things include eating the right foods, getting enough sleep, working as a pack in training and races, and working hard on the last intervals.

Next week, Harvey plans for her to team to continue running high mileage, along with three workouts for the week.

“I have the trust of these girls, so I’m excited; we know we can do this,” Harvey said. “We need to get back on board, and make them focus more; we’ve got the horses.”

For the Illini, Friday’s race in South Bend speaks volumes about what they could potentially accomplish by the end of the season, from an individual and a team standpoint.

“It’s exciting to know what we did on a good day, and it’s unthinkable to know what we can do on a great day,” Carroll said.