In the Illinois men’s cross-country team’s final meet of the 2012 season, the NCAA Championships in Louisville, Ky., the duo of Hunter Mickow and Jannis Toepfer finished 46th and 64th, respectively. Mickow nearly came away becoming Illinois’ first All-American since 2007.

“It was a very successful outcome for both Hunter and Jannis,” head coach Jake Stewart said. “I was thrilled that they responded well to the excitement surrounding the meet and to running a meet of this magnitude for the first time in their running careers.”

Mickow finished six spots away from achieving All-American status with a time of 30 minutes, 12 seconds. He had the highest finish for an Illinois runner since Trent Hoerr in 2007. Mickow concluded his cross-country career leading the Illini in the five races he has run in throughout the season.

“I definitely thought I had a good chance to break the top 40, but there were so many tough runners that 46th was a solid result,” Mickow said. “It wasn’t an ideal finish, but I’ll take it.”

Toepfer finished behind Mickow in 64th place with a time of 30:27. The meet concludes a season in which he scored points for the Illini in every meet he participated, including leading the Illini at the Big Ten Championships.

“I thought we did all right. It was a very tough race, it got out very quick and we had to keep up,” Toepfer said. “Overall, I would say it was good ending to a solid season.”

Both runners acknowledged certain aspects of their performance could have been better that might have contributed to a better result. Toepfer spoke about the need for him to have been more active and aggressive in the middle of the race in making a charge toward the front of the pack. Mickow, similarly, spoke about the failure to take better advantage of some of the movements in the middle of the race.

Now that the cross-country season has come and gone, both Toepfer and Mickow will now prepare for the indoor track season set to begin in a few weeks as both will compete in long-distance events.

“I am a confident as I can be going into track season,” Toepfer said. “It will be nice to get the team back together after a very exciting cross-country season and especially after the team was at nationals rooting us on.”

Jannis Toepfer continued, saying: “There is not much I could have done better. As a team, we could have done better at the Notre Dame and Wisconsin meets to make it to nationals, but, in retrospect, I think we can learn from them and we will be stronger next year.”