OSU Jamboree

Women's Results
Men's Results

Stillwater, Okla. – The McPherson College men’s cross country team finished 11th of 23 teams, while the women took 14th of 30 in the College Division of the annual Oklahoma State University Cowboy Jamboree Saturday morning in Stillwater, Okla.
Junior Javier Ceja set a season-best with a time of 26:04.08 and a fifth place finish to lead the Bulldogs. Ceja was the highest finishing NAIA runner. Edward Limo of Colby Community College was the top finisher with a time of 25:15.49.
Sophomore Kyle Smith (28:07.24) and freshman Morgan Peterson (28:09.96) were the next two Bulldogs to cross the finish line. The duo finished 64th and 65th respectively. Junior David Parry (29:06.51 PR), sophomore Mike Baxter (29:12.27), freshman Juan Jimenez (29:45.87) and freshman Preston Mossman (30:57.76) rounded out the scoring for McPherson. The Bulldogs tallied 319 points en route to the 11th place finish.


Javier Ceja

On the women’s side, freshman Kelsi Beam and Payton Hartman lead the Bulldogs for the second straight race. Beam ended the race at 20:09.12, good for 32nd place and the 6th fastest time in McPherson College history, while Hartman took 42nd position with at time of 20:23.17 putting her 7th on the all time list. The duo was followed by Erin Loeffler in 77th place, with a time of 21:06.13 good for 10th all time, Ashley Huizar (103rd, 21:49.68), Sonia Fuentes (132nd, 22:46.19) and Ashley Martinez (158th, 24:24.59).

Florence Ngetich of El Paso Community College won the event with a time of 17:55.43, while Amy Pierson of Southwestern College was the top NAIA finisher at 18:28.72.

I thought that the ladies ran well. We still have to close our gap down and have some people move up if we are looking to contend for top 3 at conference. I am please with how things are going as a whole right now. The men looked a little more rusty than the women. We have a very young team and a lot of them were running their first ever 8k. Add in that OSU is not an easy course it leaves us with some room for improvement. I am still happy with how things are progressing as we need to be running fast in November not the end of September.

Next up is the Lakeside Shoot out at Lakeside Park in McPherson. It is shaping up to be a competitive meet with several KCAC schools and Community Colleges coming. As of right now we are expecting 12 teams.

OSU Jamboree

We loaded up the Bus at 3:00 pm to head down to Stillwater. We had about a 3 hour ride and it went by quick. We arrived at the course with perfect weather outside.


We walked the back part of the course with the steps and hills. I really liked the course, thought it had a nice mix of hills, trails, grass, and wood chips. After a quick tour of the course we loaded back up on the bus and went to a Pasta dinner put on by the Stillwater HS team. They had good food and all proceeds went toward their program. Something we will do for years to come if they continue to put this event on.

Team after pasta dinner

Next it was off the hotel. Not the best hotel I have ever stayed in but we were only 15 min away from the course. Most of the evening was spent relaxing at the hotel due to an early morning the next day.

The team was up at 4 am for a shakeout run and Pancakes in the lobby. We loaded up the bus at 6 am to head over to the course. It was still dark out when we arrived on sight, but with the girls racing at 8:00 am i wanted to make sure we were there and they did not feel rushed getting ready for the race.


Course at 6:15 am

We had the a series of unfortunate events happen to our girls team this week. We had two freshman, Torey Fry and Paula Carpenter who were banged up to the point where they could have raced but I didn't want to risk setting them back for the upcoming weeks so we held both of them out. Kati Beam was in the school play and had to miss the meet and another girl who got sick on race day. So with our lack of depth to start with, all said and done we were only able to put 3 girls on the start line this weekend. The good part was the three girls ran well. Brittany Delker was our number 1 with 21:20 only 2 seconds off her PR, Katie Logan was our number 2 with a time of 21:42 almost a minute faster than Missouri Southern, and her time from last year and only 10 seconds off her PR.


Top Dog of the week Katie Logan finishing in a season best

Krissa Fuentes was our number 3 with a time of 24:47 which was faster than her Missouri Southern time 3 seconds off her PR and almost a minute faster than her time from 2008. So for all of the unfortunate events leading up to the race the ladies raced very well.


Men's Race start

Next up was the guys. The guys ran a good race but I am still waiting for all of our top 5 to put together a good race. We have had two solid weeks of training and workouts leading up to this meet. Shaun Griffin (the birthday boy) had a great race. Running 27:28 which was 59 seconds faster than his time from 2008. He was followed by Kyle Smith who had another solid performance running 27:48. Next in was Mike Baxter running 27:59, then Matt Brown who ran a seasons best on the tough course running 31:21 over 2 min faster than his time from 2008, and finishing up the scoring for the Bulldogs was David Parry with a time of 32:07. Dan Meibuam showed great improvement over his race at WSU running a 33:15 which is almost 6 min faster than his projected time from the Shockers race. Zach Dowling was the 7th man running 34:18 which was over a minute and half faster than his time from 2008. Fred Miller (39:05) and Ben Denton (44:49) also has solid performances for the Bulldogs. The men's team average time for the top 5 was 10 seconds faster this year over the 2008 team, so they are showing improvement across the board.

While at the meet I also had a chance to talk to one of our top girl recruits for next year Kylie Bourquin from Follett HS. We had a nice chat and she is excited to come for our overnight visit weekend.


Waiting for the Bus

All in all another good weekend. Next up is the McPherson Brooks Open. It will be a good smaller meet for us. We will get a chance to match up against some other conference schools that we have not seen yet, I am excited to see what we can do.

Missiouri Southern Stampede

We had another very successful meet this past weekend. We had three men, Smith (26:48), Griffin (26:51) and Baxter (27:14) and one women Delker (21:18) make it into our top 10 list. We had two more freshman PR for their high school distances (Smith went from 17:10 to 16:49 and Carpenter went from 19:39 to 18:40) while running the college distance of 8k and 5k. And to top it off 12 of the athletes ran faster than their projected times yet again, all in all a very impressive weekend for the Bulldogs. While all of these things are what we are striving towards, we need to remain focused in the weeks to come with some more high mileage weeks and early morning runs left in front of us. This is the most difficult time of the season with school work starting to pile up and miles being high to keep on track. I feel this team is up to the challenge. We are staying on top of our class work and they continue to work hard every day at practice. Each day I get more and more excited to see what this group is going to do in November.

5k
1 Brittany Delker 21:18.0
2 Katie Logan 21:43.0
3 Kati Beam 23:23.0
4 Paula Carpenter 23:34.0
5 Krissa Fuentes 24:48.0
6 Katey Taylor 27:50.5

8k
1 Kyle Smith 26:48.0
2 Shaun Griffin 26:51.0
3 Mike Baxter 27:18.9
4 David Parry 31:14.1
5 Matt Brown 32:12.1
6 Zach Dowling 33:47.5
7 Fred Miller 37:47.8
8 Ben Denton 43:58.0


Our next meet will be at Oklahoma State University for the Jamboree. This is the oldest cross country meet in the nation and will be another great test for us. We have handled running against the top programs in the nation very well and I expect we will continue that trend in Stillwater. If you want to see the nations best this would be a great meet to come and watch.