The Gustavus men’s cross country team seemed to save its best performance of the year for the last meet of the season with a seventh place finish out of 23 teams at the NCAA Central Region Meet held at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. The Golden Gusties scored 218 points to finish 43 points behind sixth place St. Olaf. Nebraska Wesleyan won the meet with 88 points. Gustavus finished ahead of two teams that were ranked higher regionally, and turned in the best team finish at a regional meet since 1992 when the squad finished fourth.
Individually, Chris deLaubenfels (Sr., Mount Vernon, Iowa) improved on his 41st-place finish last year finishing in 11th-place (25:35) for all-region honors, earning a chance to compete at the NCAA National Meet in Northfield, Minn. The national race will be held on the same course as the regional meet on Saturday, November 17. deLaubenfels’ finish was the highest finish by a male individual since Steffan Freeman finished 11th at the 1998 regional meet.
Alex Horton (Sr., Northfield, Ill.) continued to run well after his 19th-place finish at the MIAC Championships by finishing 29th in a time of 26:15 to earn all-region honors. The rest of the Gustie finishes included John Leaf (Jr., Center City, Minn.) placing 54th (26:45), Mark Hartman (So., White Bear Lake, Minn.) finishing 59th (26:50), Dan Foley (Jr., Minneapolis, Minn.) placing 65th (26:58), Alex Prieve (Jr., Faribault, Minn.) placing 103rd (27:45) and Jeremy Kuhn (Fy., St. Michael, Minn.) finishing 105th (27:52).