Men's Cross Country Places 13th at Regional Championships

Senior Brady Jeffers (Photo provided by Heidelberg University)

Posted: Nov 11, 2017

DELAWARE, Ohio – The Baldwin Wallace University men's cross country team finished off the season with a top-15 finish at the 2017 NCAA Division III Great Lakes Regional Championships.

The Yellow Jacket men finished in 13th place out of 36 teams with 432 total points. Calvin (Mich.) College was crowned regional champions on the men's side with 61 points.

This year's Great Lakes Regional Championship showed a marked improvement for the Yellow Jackets over last year's results of 19th for the women and 22nd for the men.

After competing in the Ohio Wesleyan Invitational earlier in the season, BW came into the regional meet familiar with the course. For the team's freshmen, the season has come full circle as most of them ran their first collegiate 8k race at the OWU Invitational in September.

Head coach Joe Eby said that his teams understood the importance of the meet and that they've run in a lot of big, competitive meets this season. He hoped for his teams to be able to take the lessons that they've learned from those races and be able to execute the race plan.

For the second meet in a row, freshman All-OAC runner Josh Hickmott (Clay, N.Y./Liverpool) was the top finisher on the men's side as he placed 57th out of 243 runners with an 8k time of 26:48.7. Sophomore Isaac Wilson (Tylersburg, Pa./North Clarion) was just a few second behind his freshman teammate as he crossed the finish line in 61st place with a time of 26:52.4.

In his final race as a Yellow Jacket, senior Brady Jeffers (South Amherst/Firelands) wrapped up his career with a 92nd place finish in a time of 27:20.7. Junior Spencer Mahon (North Royalton) finished 104th with a time of 27:32.9 and sophomore Nick Irwin (Westlake) rounded out the top-five finishes with a time of 27:48.5 to finish 118th.

The Yellow Jackets will return their core group of runners for the 2018 season, including their talented group of freshmen who continue to get better with each race, and will look forward to competing in the Ohio Athletic Conference, the Great Lakes Region and nationally.