Women win, men second at Gary Stoner Invitational

Even without junior Dani Dell'Orco, the No. 13 women's cross country team won first place out of six teams Saturday at the Gary Stoner Invitational in Fayette, Mo.

The men finished second overall out of six teams. The Bulldogs were scheduled to compete in the Border Wars meet, but the meet was canceled.

Sophomore Karen Grauel won her first collegiate race, beating the second-place finisher by more than 30 seconds.

"Starting out, I thought I was going to run with William Jewell [College] because they have some good runners," Grauel said. "I usually pace off of Dani, but she wasn't there. I took off a little too fast during the first mile because I was kind of anxious. I kind of slowed down in the middle and I felt really good."

Head coach John Cochrane said Dell'Orco missed the meet due to health issues.

Sophomores Cindy Grauel and Debbie Boedeker also finished in the top 10, with Grauel finishing third and Boedeker 10th. Junior Anne Ratermann and senior Amanda Brown rounded out the top five for Truman, both finishing in the top 15.

Truman had eight runners finish in the top 28.

"Some people ran well, some people ran in the middle and some people didn't run," Cochrane said. "We're still trying to work some things out."

Although the 'Dogs won the meet, they struggled with pack running. Cindy Grauel was nearly one minute behind Karen Grauel. Boedeker finished nearly one minute behind Cindy. Ratermann and Brown finished 15 seconds apart.

"We were spread out a lot more than we would like it to be," Cochrane said. "Ratermann had missed the last meet, and she didn't run real well in this one. The Grauels ran real well."

Truman's next meet is Oct. 23 at the Yellowjacket Classic in Lamoni, Iowa. That is the last meet before the MIAA Championships in November.

Although Truman has won two meets and placed fourth in another, Cochrane said the team still has things to work on. He said Pittsburg State University and Northwest Missouri State University are still the teams to beat in the conference.

"I would like to have some things worked out a little bit more," Cochrane said. "We've got to get our people after one and two, we've got to get them closer together. We still didn't get into the race with some of those people. Now, they've improved a lot, but they've got to make it happen."

Senior Adam Kell led the men with a fourth place overall finish.

Runners two through eight finished within 12 places and 42 seconds of each other. Juniors Michael Dial and Joey Walls finished 11th and 12th, respectively. Sophomore Chad Petrofsky and senior Zach Chapman rounded out the top five.

"We did a pretty good job," head coach Tim Schwegler said. "We were aggressive in that race. I was pretty happy overall. Walls and Chapman didn't have as good of races as they would have liked, but some other guys stepped up and did a good job."

Kell has finished first among Bulldog runners in all three meets this year. He also has three top five overall finishes. Kell had just two top-five finishes last year and only led the team in one meet.

He did not finish better than 15th in any meet during his sophomore season.

"He's pretty consistent with how he's been racing," Schwegler said. "He didn't like the heat. It was close to 80 degrees at the start of race time. In the past, he hasn't done that well in the heat. It showed a lot of courage for him to battle through the heat."

The men will also compete in the Yellowjacket Classic Oct. 23 followed by the MIAA Championships. Schwegler said the MIAA is very competitive this year, especially when you get to the teams in the middle.

"You could run the [MIAA] race 10 different times and have 10 different finishes," Schwegler said. "You have to be ready to go that day."