Missouri Cross Country kicked off their season with two team victories at their home course, Gans Creek on Friday, Aug. 30th. They got off to a great start thanks to strong performances from both the men’s and women’s teams, as nine runners finished inside the top 10 and five finished inside the top 5.

The men started the day out with their 6,000m race against the University of St. Louis and some unattached individual runners. The Tigers were able to top the results, with many runners finishing at the top of the standings. The three biggest standouts were senior Angus Beer placing third overall, sophomore Joshua Allison placing second and junior Tyler Freiner finishing first. After the race, Freiner was asked about how the Tigers were able to finish strong.

“We talked before the race,” Freiner said. “The plan was just to go out there, work together and I think we executed that perfectly.”

Two unattached runners finished in the top 5, three in the top 10.

“I’m really proud of the guys, especially the unattached freshman [who] did a great job,” Freiner said. “First collegiate race and they all hung in there and held their own. [Andrew] Hauser, [Joseph] Bariola, [Sam] Golla, they’ve been crushing the longer workouts and it’s been really cool to see.”

The women’s team competed in a 5,000m and ran against University of Saint Louis and University of Arkansas for scoring positions. There were non-scoring runners from Missouri Valley University and individual runners who participated in the event as well.

This race was top heavy with the biggest standouts being senior McKenna Revord placing eighth, senior Nicole Louw placing second and Arkansas State transfer Rahel Broemmel placing first with a time of 17:34.8. Broemmel finished more than 13 seconds ahead of her teammate, Louw.

“I think we’re pretty good in supporting and encouraging each other and I had [that feeling] in the race today,” Broemmel said.

Head coach Kyle Levermore explained that this event wasn’t crucial to the outcome of the season due to the low stakes and amount of runners not running.

Levermore did express that it was still nice “to see the team in good spirits and people having fun, wake up training a little bit. I think it was a really solid morning but we’ll kind of talk about this for 10 minutes and move on.”

The Tigers will travel to Pennsylvania next and race at Penn State in the Spiked Shoe Invitational on Sept. 13.

Edited by Michael Stamps | mstamps@themaneater.com

Copyedited by Hannah Taylor | htaylor@themaneater.com

Edited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com