The Aurora University men's cross country avenged last year's second place finish by beating Milwaukee School of Engineering to win the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference title, taking first place out of 9 teams on Saturday, October 31 on the campus of Concordia University Wisconsin on Mequon, Wisconsin.
The weather conditions were absolutely grueling, which considerably slowed times down. Runners had to deal with an extremely worn down muddy course, knee deep puddles of water, rain, and even hail. In a race that came down to the wire AU beat MSOE by a score of 33 to 43.
Senior
Calvin Robinson had a phenomenal race placing second with a time of 27:00. Freshman
Christian Barajas was awarded the NACC Freshman of the Year and Head Coach
Ryan Chapman was awarded the NACC Men's Coach of the Year honors. The Spartan men had 7 runners achieve All Conference honors (placing in the top 15).
The rest of the top 7 men's times and places were as follows:
Alex Duncan (5
th-27:04) - NACC All-Conference.
Jimmy Baeskens (6
th-27:06) - NACC All-Conference.
Matt Meyers (9
th-27:23) - NACC All-Conference.
TJ Pitcock (11
th-27:27) - NACC All-Conference.
Christian Barajas (12
th-27:33) - NACC All-Conference and Freshman of the Year.
Nick Quiroz (15
th-27:49) - NACC All-Conference.
Others runners in the top 25 were:
Nick Shaw (16
th-27:50)
Kevin Crozier (21
st- 28:18)
Adrian Vargas (23
rd- 28:19)
Matt Bush (25
th-28:23).
Next action for the Spartan men comes on
Saturday, November 14 when they travel to the NCAA Division III Midwest Regional hosted by Augustana College. Meet time is set for 12:00 p.m. in Rock Island, Illinois.
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