GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - The Kalamazoo College men's cross country team finished 23rd at the Calvin Knight Invite on Saturday.
Jackson Kelly led Kalamazoo with a time of 27:34 to finish 127th overall in the 8k event.
Caleb Patton posted Kalamazoo's second best time of 30:30.
Kalamazoo returns to action on Saturday, Sept. 22 at the Raider Invitational hosted by Grand Rapids Community College.
Coach Koster's Comments
"Almost every single guy who lined up for us today had some kind of significant setback in his training over the summer, so it was good to see them pack it up and run conservatively for the first half of the race, and then just try to pass as many people as possible in the second half."
"Jackson got caught up in the moment a bit and got out a little harder than he was ready for, but he still held on to run 5.5 seconds faster than he did at this meet last year. Plus, the fact that he could be right up on the back of the lead group in the early part of the race shows how talented he is. As he gets healthier and fitter, he'll hang with those guys deeper and deeper into the race."
"The younger guys were counting on Caleb to lead them through the first half of the course at a sensible pace, and he did that very well. He pulled away from them in the last couple miles, but I don't think Preston Grossling or Sam Meyer would've run nearly as fast if they didn't have Caleb's help early on. Preston ran 56.1 seconds faster than at this meet last year, and Sam ran 1:08.7 faster."
"We would've liked to finish higher than 23rd as a team, but when we looked at the results afterwards and saw that both Olivet and Alma were within 165 points of us, we realized that the teams we're trying to catch by the end of the season are at least within range. We'll be training hard in the next two weeks leading up to the Raider Invite to see if we can't chip away at the gaps between us and those other MIAA schools."