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njcaa cross country
juco national champions BALANCED WARRIORS WIN THIRD STRAIGHT NJCAA NATIONAL CROSS-country championshipCoach Brent McLain will be the first to admit it. The Rend Lake College men’s cross-country team brought tears to his eyes of Saturday morning.
Those were tears of joy streaming from the three-time National "Coach of the Year" both during and after the 2003 National Junior College Athletic Association Division II National Championships at Rim Rock Farm near the Kansas University campus. "It was great to see all seven Rend Lake College guys running together like they did. The crowd was amazed. It was just an unbelievable feeling," McLain admitted after his team’s third straight NJCAA D-II title. Unable to crack a South African-Kenyan monopoly at the forefront, the Winged Warriors representing Ina, IL and Region XXIV bunched seven runners between sixth-place overall finisher Rey Alvarez (second as far as team standings were concerned) and the No. 7 RLC finisher, 16th overall (12th team-wise), to run away with the team championship. The 2003 National Champs finished with a team-best 23 points, thanks to Rey Alvarez (Danville) in 25 minutes 50 seconds over the five-mile layout under chilly, less-than-ideal conditions; seventh-place Justin Kunz (Lebanon) in 25:51 (third, team); ninth-place Tim Clark (Indianapolis, IN / Franklin Central High School) in 26:04 (fifth, team); 10th-place Ricky Alvarez (Danville) in 26:06 (sixth, team), and 11th-place Thomas McQuade (Berrie, Ontario, Canada) in 26:15 (seventh, team).
Rend Lake College claimed its first cross-country national trophy in 2001
with 55 points -- runner-up Paradise Valley Community College out of
Phoenix, AZ had 76 -- and dominated last fall with a winning 45-point total
-- Johnson County (KS) C.C. was second with 90 then. |
Warrior Ian Hornabrook was the individual medalist both of those years before graduating and moving on to the University of Florida program.
This time, Paradise Valley had to settle for second with 50 points behind
Kenyan Dan Kanyaruhuru, who was fourth overall in 25:44.
The top three spots all went to foreign athletes representing Cloud County C.C. (KS), but the team’s other competitors were nonexistent at the finish line on Saturday, not unexpectedly.
Marc Rodrigues of Cloud County, by way of South Africa, was first in 25:12. He was chased by teammates Juddah Tallam and Lucky Hadebe, both Kenyans. Tallam was second in 25:36, Hadebe third in 25:37. Tallam was fifth overall as a freshman; Rodrigues was a Third-Team All-America pick a year ago after taking 14th.
The No. 1 American-born runner on this occasion was fifth-place Thomas Ruddy of Mott Community College (MI) in 25:48, four seconds behind Paradise Valley’s Kanyaruhuru and two seconds ahead of the Rend Lake College Warrior entourage.
In addition to the five places that counted,
McLain got a 15th-place showing from McLeansboro contributor Justin
Crain (11th, team) in 26:24 and a 16th from Jeremy Kunz (Lebanon) in
26:28 (12th, team).
McQuade was a First-Team All-America honoree as a freshman after
finishing third overall behind Hornabrook. Crain was 18th in last fall’s
second National Championship.
The other five 2003 entries for McLain are freshmen, including the
Alvarez twins and the Kunz twins. Yet another freshman, Jason Phillips
(Lafayette, IN / Jefferson H.S.) was third two weeks ago when RLC swept
Region XXIV laurels with the top seven runners, minus McQuade.
The championship squad could just as easily have included Chris Herren
(Harrisburg), a National Finals veteran who was 23rd a year ago, former
Indiana All-Stater Bryce Smith (Brazil, IN) or fellow freshman Lucas
Roethlisberger (Nashville).
Next year the NJCAA will combine cross-country into one division,
lumping those schools which give room-and-board athletic waivers with
those which do not (currently Division II, which awards only tuition and
fees).
Central Arizona won this year’s Division I crown on the same Rim Rock
Farm course just north of Lawrence. In case you are wondering how RLC
would have fared . . . All seven Warriors finished better time-wise than
the second best member of the D-I champs. Pretty impressive.
Other D-II teams in the running included No. 6 Macomb C.C. (MI), 203;
No. 7 Hutchinson (KS) C.C., 212; No. 8 William Rainey Harper College
(Palatine, IL), 240; No. 9 Oakland C.C. (MI), 260; No. 10 Illinois
Central College in Peoria, 269; No. 11 Coffeyville (KS) C.C., 283, and
No. 12 Northwest-Shoals C.C. (AL), 323.
At
Moorhead she graduated magna cum laude and
proceeded nonstop to North High School in Fargo, North Dakota. There she
coached speech and debate and served on National Forensic League district
committees and as a judge at northern Minnesota forensic tournaments.
The athletic programs offer equal opportunities for both male and female non-athletic scholarship students. Brookhaven College athletes compete at the Division III level through the National Junior College Athletic Association. Brookhaven College is a member of the UPS Metro Athletic Conference.
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