With the sun shining through fall foliage and the leaves falling gently to the ground, the St. Catherine University Cross Country Invitational began Saturday in a temperature of 76 degrees, a record high for the middle of October and an unusual condition for runners.

Members of both the Tommie men’s and women’s teams overcame the unusual weather, however, to place in the 4K race.

Women’s team

For the women’s team, sophomore Taylor Berg took first place with a time of 14:30, beating the second place finisher from Hamline by 6.3 seconds.

“I was told to go out hard in this race because I am a mid-distance track runner,” Berg said.
“Alli [Metzler] is a distance runner and was told to start out more conservative and maintain.”

Metzler, a senior and team captain, finished sixth with a time of 15:05.4.

Overall, the women’s team placed second with 48 points, finishing behind Luther.

“Improvement. That’s our goal for the season,” Metzler said.

This was the Tommies’ second meet at St. Kate’s this season.

“It’s not often that we run the same course twice in one season,” Metzler said.

“We all really improved from last time we ran this race. It was a total team effort,” Berg said.

Men’s team

For the men’s team, junior Ben Sathre finished the 4K in first place with a time of 12:11, just beating out the second place finisher from Hamline.

“I was really, really tired,” Sathre said. “We’ve had a tough week of training. I was just hanging on for the win.”

The next St. Thomas finisher, junior Tyler Iverson, placed 13th with a time of 12:45.

The men’s team ended the meet finishing fourth overall with a score of 67.

“The season is going well,” Sathre said. “We’ve had some tough training as the team is getting into that peak mode.”

The meet was held on St. Kate’s campus, and included Hamline, St. John’s, and Luther College for both the men’s and women’s competition. Macalester and St. Ben’s also competed in the women’s competition.