WARRENSVILLE, Ill. - The Kalamazoo College men's cross country team competed in the Wheaton Gil Dodds Invite on Saturday (Sept. 16) at the St. James Farm Forest Preserve. The Hornets finished in 12th place out of 18 teams with 370 points.
Chicago won the event with 43 points, with Washington coming in second (50 points), Hope in third (90 points), Carthage in fourth (146 points), and North Central in fifth (149 points).
Headlining the Hornets was Will Thomas, who ran a 26:40 and finished in 81st. Noah Eckenroth and Rob Kloosterman were the next two Kalamazoo runners to cross the finish line at 27:33 and 27:41.
Patrick Dunfee and Kyle Ackerson finished within two seconds of each other, with Dunfee running a 28:10 and Ackerson finishing at 28:12. That was the fastest that Dunfee has run in his four-year career. Caleb Ewald and Levi Thomas also finished one after another as Ewald ran a 28:51 and Thomas came in at 28:52. Ewald shaved 16 seconds off his previous fastest time, while Thomas set a personal record by 52 seconds.
Also running for the Hornets were Keegan Reynolds (29:14), Garrick Hohm (29:55), Gerardo Herrera-Sanchez (30:29), and Tobin Schiller (36:05). Reynolds finished in under 30 minutes for the first time in his three-year career, beating his previous personal-best by 59 seconds.
"This was a big day of progress for the men's team," said head coach Kyle Morrison. "We had some lifetime bests after a hard week of training. Every guy ran significantly better than our season opener at Aurora last week, in some cases over 90 seconds of improvement. We will come back against some MIAA competition in Lansing this coming Friday, and I know today's momentum will carry the guys into prepping well for that race."
Kalamazoo will stay in Michigan on Friday (Sept. 22) to run in the Lansing CC Invite at Grand Wood Park in Lansing, Mich.