The Morningside Men and Women’s Cross Country teams look towards competing at Dakota State University’s meet on Saturday September 10th after a last minute meet cancellation.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs were scheduled to run in Deborah, Iowa Saturday morning against some of the toughest and most diverse competition in the Midwest. During the week the meet was canceled due to impending thunderstorms and flood warnings in the area. Among the competition was Augustana, whose men\u2019s team is ranked ninth in the NCAA III Midwestern region.<\/p>\n
Under the direction of head coach David Nash, a Morningside Alumni and decorated track athlete, the team was directed to a meet of similar size in Madison, SD. Local collegiate teams such as Wayne State, Briar Cliff, Northwestern College, and Hastings College were all present. Hasting\u2019s women\u2019s team is ranked nationally ahead of the mustangs, a statistic that isn\u2019t overlooked by Nash. Because of this, Nash believes the team is making a great last minute switch to Madison.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur reputation of nationally ranked teams and the integrity of what we brought has been pretty good,\u201d Nash spoke to the men\u2019s team as part of a pre-meet speech. \u201cI want [our team] to be a hurricane, we have to keep this reputation going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn Groff, a senior runner for the team, had a wealth of motivation for this meet after being able to witness his older sibling compete on this same course years before. \u201cThis meet has different competition that we don\u2019t normally face. We are getting another opportunity to prove ourselves as a team,\u201d says Groff adding, \u201cNorthern State is tough competition for the women, so it\u2019s about to go down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Nash was not only enthusiastic about the change of location for Saturday, but for how his runners have been performing lately. During the pre-meet talk he gave to the men\u2019s team, he voiced his excitement for individual runners. \u201cAlec [DeVries] has been one of the fastest cross country runners in Morningside history. Sean [Skillern] has transformed himself. We almost lost [Jason Kenny] to Northwestern but there\u2019s a reason he is here,\u201d Nash articulates with a grin spread across his face. The team joined in with laughter as they acknowledged Kenny’s crucial part on the team. “He is figuring things out,” Nash exclaims.<\/p>\n
Morningside’s Cross Country teams are headed into this meet after a 6th<\/sup> place (men\u2019s) and 5th<\/sup> place (women\u2019s) finish last Friday in Sioux Falls at the Augustana Twilight meet. Out of the Great Plains Athletic Conference, Northwestern men finished 5th<\/sup> and Dordt women finished 4th<\/sup> at this same meet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Morningside Men and Women’s Cross Country teams look towards competing at Dakota State University’s meet on Saturday September 10th after a last minute meet cancellation. The Mustangs were scheduled to run in Deborah, Iowa Saturday morning against some of the toughest and most diverse competition in the Midwest. During the week the meet was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":750,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/750"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/luxjournalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}