Senior Courtney Yaeger was near the front through 2K, but she fell after another runner cut her off at the NCAA Midwest Regional meet Friday. The fall pushed Yaeger back in the race but did not take her out of contention, as she finished in the top 25, earning all-region honors.
Freshman Alyssa Schneider, who remained with Yaeger to that point, placed 12th overall and earned all-region honors, leading the Illinois women’s cross-country team to a ninth-place finish in Springfield, Mo.
“I’m really proud that we had two all-region runners.” head coach Jeremy Rasmussen said. “Both girls ran great races. Last year, I think our top finisher for the regional meet was in the 80s, and this year, we had two girls in the top 25. It shows that we’re getting better, but we want to be a team that can go to the national meet, and we’re still a little ways from that.”
Schneider led the team, running the 6K course in 21 minutes, 4 seconds. Yaeger finished in 21:30, and senior Madeline Aufmann, junior Katie Porada, sophomore Chloe Schmidt, and freshmen Amanda Fox and Lindsey Rakosnik rounded out the group in which all the athletes finished in 24 minutes or less.
“I think in general they competed well for where they started,” Rasmussen said. “But we didn’t start in the right place for some of them. Alyssa, Courtney and Katie started in the right place, but our four, five, six, seven started too far back.”
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
Illinois’ finished behind Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Minnesota, the top-three teams, respectively. The Illini scored 290 points, 227 behind the Cyclones, who advanced to the NCAA Championships.
“We did about as good as we did at Big Tens, which is a little bit disappointing because we definitely have the talent to do better, but it was a learning experience for our young group,” Yaeger said.
She said she was relieved to still earn all-region honors even though she fell and was not feeling 100 percent on race day.
“I think what we did well was that we fought,” Yaeger said. “There were people that weren’t feeling well and were battling injury, and they were still in it and they did the best they could.”
Schneider added that she was ecstatic about how she raced.
“I was really happy with my race,” Schneider said. “I didn’t really know what to expect in the race, but I wanted to be top 25, so I was really happy with my place.”
Rasmussen said even though the cross-country season is over for the team, this isn’t the end.
“The biggest thing is we got to know that were in really good shape, and we have to take that and move it into the indoor track season,” Rasmussen said. “That’s the next thing on our schedule. The team has to know that even though the results didn’t show exactly what we wanted, we ran really well this year and we have to now carry that over to the track.”
Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.
