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Augustana Cross Country Teams Both Finish Sixth at Nationals

Aaron Runge and Jesus Urtusuastegui both earned All-American honors

11/23/2019 2:51:00 PM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The Augustana men's and women's cross country teams both placed sixth on Saturday morning at the 2019 NCAA DII Cross Country Championships in Sacramento, California, at Arcade Creek Cross Country Course.

"I'm super excited and proud of both of our squads," Cross Country and Track & Field head coach Tracy Hellman said. "We really excelled at a high level. On this stage in the nationals, the teams that you are competing against are the best in DII, but we have always believed that we should be in the top end of those schools. We wanted to give ourselves an opportunity and we did that today."

Viking Seniors Aaron Runge and Jesus Urtusuastegui placed 16th and 25th, respectively, to earn All-American honors. The women's team also had two top-50 finishers on the day.

Women's Race
After finishing in 18th place at nationals last season, the women's team jumped up 12 spots in 2019 for a sixth-place finish. It was the first top-ten finish for the program since its fifth-place finish in 2015. Overall, it's the women's 10th top-10 finish at Nationals in program history.

Nicolette Schmidt led the way for the Vikings with a time of 21:02.9 and a 35th place finish. Schmidt was closely followed by Cait Savey with a time of 21:11.5 (42nd place), Rebekah Rairdon with a time of 21:18.2 (50th place) and Claire Boersma with a time of 21:19.7 (53rd place).

Rachel Rairdon finished the race with a time of 21:22.5 (55th place) while Patty Jo English and Haylee Waterfall logged times of 21:25.7 (58th place) and 21:29.0 (64th place) respectively.

The Vikings return all seven of their runners from this year's Nationals in the 2020 cross country season.

Men's Race
The men's team jumped up four spots from last season's National's placement to finish in sixth-place on Saturday. Overall, it's the men's 12th top-10 finish in program history and 10th in the last 11 seasons.

Runge and Urtusuastegui led the way for the Vikings with times of 30:14.5 and 30:21.2, respectively. Behind the Viking All-Americans were Austin Miller with a time of 31:11.7 (54th place), Skylar Dejong with a time of 31:13.5 (60th place) and Nathan Schroeder with a time of 31:27.5 (76th place).

Henry Klitzke and Matt Steiger finished the race for the Vikings in 123rd and 159th place with times of 31:57.9 and 32:27.8, respectively.

Quotable
"We had a heck of a run by our young ladies and none of them are graduating in that group," Hellman added. "They are getting valuable experience and have big goals in the future. On our men's side, it was another great finish in the top-10. We did it as a team. We had two All-Americans and that's really special for them to go out on their last cross country run like that. I am super proud of both teams. We are going to let this sink in but I am really excited for the program and about how we represented Augustana at a high level."

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