(South Bend, IN) - The Men's team continued their with momentum at the Bethel Invite in South Bend, Indiana on Friday, October 6. The team improved their overall time by another full 2 minutes from their National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) qualifying time two weeks ago at Lansing. The team earned a 14th place finish in a very fast race. The team also had 7 personal records and 1 season best.
Micah Bauer (Freshman; Traverse City, MI) now stands third overall on the all time list with a 26:01 total time, with finishing in 16th place and a 16 second improvement. Luke Bentz (Junior; Fort Wayne, IN) had a breakout day with a new personal best time of 28:27, an overall improvement of 44 seconds. Both Nathan Milliman (Freshman; Ann Arbor, MI) and Theodore Eising (Senior; Royal Oak, MI) made it back-to-back races with personal improvements, as Milliman cut 13 seconds and Eising cut 8. They finished in times of 29:00 and 29:06 respectively.
Adam Fisch (Sophomore; Caro, MI) and Dominic Catallo (Freshman; Westland, MI) had the biggest improvements on the day. Fisch finished up the team scoring by crossing the line fifth for the Cardinals in 29:37 and beating his previous best by 1:13. Catallo finished sixth for the Cardinals in 30:42 with an improvement of 1:18 from his previous best.
Avery Sanchez (Grad Senior; Allen Park, MI) also saw improvement, as he ran his season best race once again, by beating his time from Lansing by 40 seconds. He continues to close in on a new personal record. Jared Stiver (Senior; Tecumseh, MI) continues to have a very impressive season, just two weeks removed from running a new personal record by 1:30, he improved his time again by another 50 seconds. Stiver finished with a new personal time of 35:09.
"I am really proud of the way this group has performed over the last three weeks. We seem like we are picking up some steam and putting out some really good races. These next couple weeks are our biggest for training and making sure we keep this rolling. We are starting to show big improvements towards the right time of the season and it makes it very exciting heading into the back half of our schedule," said Head Coach Dominic Santina on his thoughts about today's performance.
The team will have next week off, before heading to Grand Rapids on Saturday, October 21 for the NAIA Great Lakes Invite hosted by Aquinas.
