The race for the Big Ten championship is the biggest competition of the year for the Northwestern cross country team – but it’s also the smallest.
With a total of 91 runners from 11 teams competing Sunday in the 5K race at Illinois’ Orange and Blue Course, the Wildcats placed sixth in a meet that was small by comparison to previous races, which often had 200 or more runners competing on longer, trickier courses.
Running in Champaign, Ill., for the third time this season, the Cats knew what to expect. For some teams, a sixth-place finish out of 11 teams would be disappointing. But ask the Cats squad if they ran a bad race, and they’ll tell a different story.
“I think we all were really excited with our race,” junior Rachel Evjen said. “We had a good chance of being second or third place. It was kind of a shock that we got sixth because we all thought we ran well.”
Evjen led the Cats with a fifth-place finish, making her the first NU runner ever to earn All-Big Ten honors. Freshman Diana Hossfeld followed Evjen by placing 11th – good enough for second-team All-Big Ten.
“Coming into Northwestern, I never thought I’d be the first person to do it,” Evjen said about earning the conference honor. “I guess I didn’t even know about it until I was reading it on the Internet.”
NU’s next-best scorers were juniors Karen Rogers, who placed 25th, and Nicole Kuznia, who finished 38th. Senior Sara Jurek, who placed 58th, was the last NU runner to earn points for the team. Nora Culligan, Nicole Kalogeropoulos, Jennifer Anderson and Kyna Forkins also ran for NU but didn’t factor into its final tally.
On a day when the weather was fair and winds blew at the runners’ backs, a surprise outing from Michigan State stole the show. The Spartans destroyed the competition with a 66-point margin of victory – the second-highest in Big Ten history.
“They killed everybody,” Jurek said. “That was very, very surprising.”
Hearing cheers for “Sara” from various spectators as she made her way through the course, Jurek pretended they were intended for her, using them as motivation. As the fifth runner for the Cats, Jurek is in a position to narrow the divide between the first and fifth runners, crucial in earning points.
“We need to close the gap,” Evjen said. “Michigan State’s first and fifth runners had a 43-second difference. We had a one-minute-and-23-second difference. It adds up.”
Michigan State defeated six-time defending-Big Ten champion Wisconsin for its second title in 20 years. All of the Spartans’ runners finished in the top 14.
The Big Ten race also helped to show NU what they need to focus on in preparation for the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships, to be held on Nov. 20 in Carbondale, Ill.
“Staying together,” Evjen said of the team’s upcoming challenges. “Everyone knows that’s something we need to work on. If it would work better, (we) should definitely try to run together. And that would help the runners know where they are at.”
Hossfeld said she anticipates that the softer workouts and the realization that the next race could be their last will provide motivation to push the team to another level of competition.
“Our team still hasn’t reached its potential yet,” Hossfeld said. “We’re all kind of exhilarated because we know we’re near the end. We need to stay tough and know who we have to beat.”
