By james art Seven University of Nebraska at Kearney cross country runners earned All-MIAA honors as the Loper men finished third and the women fifth at the MIAA Championships Saturday afternoon in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Twelve men’s teams competed in the 8km race, while 13 women’s teams competed in the 6km course. The top 20 finishers earned All-MIAA honors.
UNK had seven second-team honors in York freshman Kassidy Stuckey (11th), Blair freshman Reece Ewald (13th) and Central City junior Ella Bulke (19th) in the women’s race and senior David City Peyton Davis (12th), Blair senior Sam Lueders (14th), Kansas senior Brett Schoenhofer (17th) and Omaha redshirt junior Nick Abdallah (20th) in the men’s race.
Schoenhofer and Abdallah are multiple honors.
The regionally ranked men tallied 99 points to trail No. 16 Northwest Missouri (47) and defending champion and No. 18 Pittsburg State (76). UNK had its seven starters all finish in the top 46 with a field consisting of 106 finishers. Northwest’s Grant Bradley (23:31.1) won by nearly six seconds. Top efforts for UNK came from Davis (24:14.0), Lueders (24:15.9) and Schoenhofer (24:24.2).
The women with fewer hands, seeded 17th, scored 97 points to be just behind No. 29 Northwest (83).
#10 Pitt State won its sixth title in the last seven years (55), with #22 Rogers State second (70) and #20 Fort Hays State third (75). Hays’ Emily Diercks (21:30.0) paced the 106 finishers with three UNK best times coming from Stuckey (22:05.5), Ewoldt (22:11.3) and Buhlke (22:14.8).
Prior to the race, Fremont senior Mara Hemmer and Firth sophomore Tanner Cooper were honored for being this year’s Mammoth “A” meet winners in MIAA cross country. Hemmer has a 4.0 cumulative GPA as a biology major, and Davis is also a 4.0 student in the health sciences.