Photo courtesy of SMSU Athletic Communications Pictured above is the 2018 SMSU Men’s Cross Country team. Front Row (L to R): Clayton Hartle, Andrew Nordquist, Ben Broze, Joe Bustrak and Dylan Pierson. Back Row (L to R): John Wyatt Reece, Issac Fischer, Kaden Cameron, Bashir Aidrus and Brett Attenberger.

MARSHALL – After beginning their season in Sioux Falls, S.D. for the Augustana Twilight meet that saw the SMSU men’s cross country team finish 19th of the 23 participating teams and the women’s team finish 16th of 25, both Mustangs cross country clubs will be hoping to gain some traction in the rest of the season.

Girls

Led by two upperclassmen in senior Kristen Weber and junior Kayla Jansky, the girls cross country team looks poised for an even better finish in the conference meet to close out their season according to coach Dan Allen.

“You know I’m expecting for all us, both men and women, to place higher than they did last year at the conference meet,” said Allen. “You know with the men I think we can move up two or three spots, ladies side I think we can do about the same thing.”

In last season’s NSIC Championship meet, the women finished 12th. A couple of weeks later, the women finished 25th as a team in the NCAA Regional Championship held in Kearney, Nebraska.

Boys

Last year, All-American Bashir Aidrus became the first Mustang in program history to qualify for the NCAA Championships as an individual runner to cap off a historical sophomore campaign. Coach Allen is hoping to see a carryover of success into his junior season.

“He is definitely going to be someone that we can look at to be a national qualifier again,” said Allen.

Aidrus – along with senior Ben Broze – will be called upon to help lead a young Mustang team that currently has six freshman on roster. Coach Allen is hoping to mold those younger runners into key members of the team by focusing on the fundamentals of what it takes to be a collegiate athlete. For the more experienced runners, Allen expects them to keep building upon the success of last season.

“For our freshman, it’s just building them into what a college athlete is,” said Allen. “Teaching them how to run at the college distance, train like a collegiate athlete. For our returners you know the focus is building off of last year. Last year we kind of took a little baby step with everybody. We were pretty freshmen heavy last year as well, we’re pretty freshman heavy again this year and a lot its going to be working on just building from the blocks we’ve built last year.”