Chicago, Ill. - On Friday, August 29th, Illinois Tech Cross Country had their season opener at the North Park/Concordia Chicago Early Invitational at Schiller Woods in Chicago.
The Scarlet Hawks started their season off in stride, with the men's team taking 3rd place and the women's team finishing 4th place.
The opening meet was a chance for the team to debut all the hard work they put in in the offseason. After being on campus for the last two weeks training together, the scarlet hawks raced together for the first time this year.
For the opening race of the season, the team raced a 5K instead of the typical 6K race distance for the women and the 8K race distance for the men.
The debut 5K is a great time to update the record books. The Scarlet Hawks had 5 new entries in the record book with Rachel Brettin landing in the #21 spot and Sophia Halama earning the #22 spot. Brettin also ran the program's fastest women's 5K time since 2014! The men's team had three entries, with two of them being freshmen in their first collegiate race. 10th, 11th, and 12th on the record books were taken by Lane Regan, freshman Benjamin Gaeta, and freshman Jonathan Garcia-Hernandez, respectively.
Head Coach Tyler McQuality liked what he saw for the Scarlet Hawks first meet of the season.
"I'm thrilled with the results from our first meet," said McQuality. "The performance matched exactly what we anticipated, which is a great sign. What we've been seeing in practices and workouts is clearly translating over into competition, and it's important that we keep building on that throughout the season as we work toward our individual and team goals. I'm especially excited for the week ahead as we preview the conference course (at University of Wisconsin – Green Bay)."
The first race of a season is a lot for the freshmen on the team; it is their first collegiate race while dealing with the stress of starting their college career on and off the course. Garcia-Hernandez has definitely noticed the difference in the transition from high school to college.
"Becoming a collegiate runner has shown me the massive difference between being a student-athlete in high school and being one in college," said Garcia-Hernandez. "Constantly balancing training, sleep, school, homework, a social life, and tuition has been a challenging start. However, I am blessed to be able to continue doing a sport that I love at the collegiate level."
Top Performers
Men's 5k
Women's 5k
Up Next
The Scarlet Hawks will head out to Green Bay, WI, at the UW Green Bay Phoenix Open on Saturday, September 6th. This course is brand new to every member of the team and will be a great experience to reflect on what the conference course will be like.
