The men’s cross country team finished 29th out of 33 teams at the Nuttycombe Wisconsin Invitational on Sept. 28.

Despite the result, a common theme from the team was how some aspects of sports are more important than what ends up on the score sheets.

“For us to come in … and have all the guys step up and really evolve in their roles, while it might not show up to much on paper, it was a really big day for the men,” head coach Sarah Haverman said.

The team has struggled in prior years at this same invitational, and a new season brought little change on the course. However, Havemen pointed out there was a difference in attitude this time around.

“In the past, we didn’t have an approach that was consistent with who we were, and we got into the meet and felt like we had to be someone different,” Haverman said. “The reality of what the men did well this past weekend is that they approached it how they’ve been approaching everything else, and they ran for each other, and everybody fulfilled their role.”

Haverman added it was a really good experience for the freshmen to see what to do in situations of adversity. She believed the upperclassmen displayed an attitude of persistence and fulfilled their assigned roles for the sake of the team.

The team was without some of its veteran runners who participated last year due to them redshirting this season, but the Illini were able to maintain a similar place with a young squad.

“The finish was right around where we were last year and to be there facing a lot of challenges, a lot of adversity without having our top guys Jesse Reiser and Jon Davis this year says a lot about the team stepping up in the situation,” senior Dan Lathrop said. “I think you’ll see we still have a lot of room to grow, and I think we’ll see some better team finishes as the year goes on, but I think we made a solid step forward this weekend.”

Lathrop also described why this specific meet has given prior Illini nightmares.

“This is always a pretty tough course … it’s a really deep meet, between me and Billy (Magnesen), there was about 12 seconds, and there was about 30 places between us … a difference in 10 seconds can mean a lot, place-wise,” Lathrop said.

Individually, Magnesen finished 80th, Dan Lathrop finished 112th and Zack Dale finished 160th out of 224.

The next meet for the Illini is the Bradley Pink Classic on Oct. 12 at Bradley University at 4 p.m.

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