Matt Lawder, a Junior cross country runner at Butler University, is the Men's Cross Country correspondent for the HLN Blog.
It was another successful run at the Horizon League Cross Country Championships, as this year the meet was held in Detroit. On the men's side, we took home our team's third consecutive sweep, this time going 1-thru-6, with Andy Baker grabbing his third consecutive Horizon League title. Believe it or not, to get pumped up for the meet, the team watched 27 Dresses on the bus before heading out for the warm up. Katherine Hiegl's performance really got the team focused for the race.
While we won the meet, our team clearly lost the battle of the facial hair competition as Detroit's Pat Liederbach took home the crown for best beard. The rest of the league's facial hair exploits have inspired a few guys on our team to start a "beard-off." Tom Boardman, Steve Lisgo and Rob Mullet are all attempting not to shave for as long as possible. The first to shave their face will also have to shave their head. I would pick Boardman to crack first. By the way, Liederbach and his UDM colleagues did a great job hosting the meet. The course was in great shape despite the recent wet weather we have been having, although I could have done with a couple of less hills on the course.
The women reclaimed their league title with authority, taking the top three spots and scoring 21 points. Lauren McKillop and Katie Clark looked smooth at the front of the pack and Shelbi Burnett had the run of the day for the team, stepping up to third place in the race.
Most of the team was lucky to make it to the league meet. We were having a bit of sickness going around the team last week and after a couple of rough workouts, coach Roe started quarantining people who might be sick. When Clark's roommate Kirtsy Legg started getting ill, she actually moved into my house for the next three days. Coach got a little paranoid, but at least everyone's back to good health now.
While the team was preparing for this past weekend's race, Coach Gauson got in a race of his own last Friday in downtown Indianapolis. Coach Darren has been eating up a steady diet of 10 mile tempos on the canal that runs by campus, as well as jumping in on the occasional session with the team, although he sees anything under ten miles worth of work as too easy. Coach Darren, as well as his bother Kris, are renowned for getting out hard, but Gauson found himself in second place at the 1-mile mark of his 4-mile race. But, with some quality cheering from some of our team (we broke out the Scottish and British flags for the race), coach started making his move around the 1.5-mile mark. Once the race hit the canal downtown, it was over, and he cruised to a victory...covering the 4 miles in 19:20.
With the season winding down for our team, it's just kicking up for some other Bulldog squads. Our team, and everyone on campus has been getting excited for the start of the basketball season with the Bulldogs being ranked 10th (that's right, 10th!!!) in the nation. We all headed down for the first exhibition game of the season on Sunday, a big win over DePauw.
Also, with the other fall sports ending, the cross country team has been asked to an exhibition match of their own. After most of the Brits on the team have been talking for year about their amazing soccer (excuse me, football) skills from their youth, they've finally gotten themselves a game to show off in. The guys are trying to set up a match over the Thanksgiving break with the women's soccer team. While I have seen Lisgo do a thousand juggles with a flat basketball in one try, I really don't know how well our team's lateral movement is going to be only a couple weeks (or hopefully a couple days) after the season.
But the team's focus hasn't shifted too far off the task at hand. In two weeks we'll be heading down to Indiana University for the NCAA Regionals.
