The cross country team had its two-meet win streak snapped this weekend as the split squad finished 16th out of 26 teams at the Roy Griak Invitational in Minnesota. Junior Audrey Huth continued to lead the way for the Wildcats, giving the team its best finish at 17th out of 272 runners.
“Overall, it went well,” Huth said. “It was our first big race of the year and we came very close to reaching our goal. I wanted to make top 20 and came in 17th so I was very happy about that.”
Huth has been the top finisher for Northwestern in every race that she has run so far this year and nearly all of last year as well. Sophomore Lexie Goldsmith also had a strong race as she was the second NU runner to cross the finish line, placing 75th overall.
The team also had another race on Saturday at Lake Forest College where it was purple and white domination. The Cats had five runners, Julia Buford, Janelle Li-A-Ping, Hallie Busta, Charlotte ter Haar and Libby Kocha finish second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth respectively at the Forester Invitational.
“One of our coaches told us that if we all ran our best times we would score 37 points,” ter Haar said. “We ended up with 22 points so that was really great for us.”
Expectations are high for this squad and there’s a real sense of excitement concerning its potential; according to ter Haar, people are really starting to believe in the program.
“We are starting to realize that all the little things add up,” ter Haar said. “We came back for preseason in August and I could really tell that everyone put the work in this summer. It was really inspiring and everyone was in a really good place to start off.”
Coach April Likhite also senses big things for the program.
“We have a lot more depth this year than we have in the past,” Likhite said. “Our goal is always to be better than last year. We didn’t really lose any of our big ‘impactors’ and we’ve been running healthy too for the most part. I think we are ready to make that jump this year and move up in our region. In the next few years, we hope to be one of the better teams in the Big Ten so we can be on the line at Nationals.”
The cross-country team’s next race is the Notre Dame Invitational on Sept. 30 in South Bend, Ind.
