2023 Great Midwest Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships, Saturday Oct. 21 | women race at 10:30 a.m. and men race at 11:30 a.m. | Pioneer Park, Canton, Ohio
Links
Live Results | Webcast | Championship Page | Tickets
Information
Top 20 finishers in each race will receive All-G-MAC honors, with top 10 finishers earning first-team honors, and G-MAC Runner, Coach and Freshman of the Year awards will also be given out, as well as the Elite 26 Award for both genders...Fans will be permitted to attend and can purchase tickets on the G-MAC website at the link above for $10 each. Spectators will be asked to adhere to signage placed around the course... Assorted championship merchandise will be sold on site. Debit or credit card purchases will be preferred.
Women's Preview
A young Hillsdale College women's squad heads to the 2023 G-MAC Championships looking to contend despite a tough field of opposing teams on Saturday.
The overwhelming favorite entering Saturday's team race is Cedarville, who are ranked 18th in NCAA DII in the most recent USTFCCCA poll, and who captured the crown with a dominant performance last year. The Yellow Jackets are led by senior Hannah Rhem, who finished fourth at the 2022 G-MAC Championships and has race wins at the All-Ohio Intercollegiate and the UAH Chargers Invite in 2023, as well as a strong pack.
Another always-strong contender is Walsh, who has a young pack led by sophomore Camryn Barker, who has two top-10 finishes on the year, and freshman Pyper Gibson, who won the Lock Haven Invite earlier this year.
Hillsdale will be in the mix with one of the top contenders for the individual crown in the race in junior Liz Wamsley, who earned All-American honors last season and is a three-time first team All-G-MAC honoree. Wamsley has won three of the four races she entered this season, and took fourth at a field full of All-American talent and national title contenders at the Lewis Crossover earlier in October. Wamsley will battle with several contenders, including Rhem, Cedarville's 2022 G-MAC Champion Savannah Ackley, and the Yellowjackets' 2022 G-MAC third-place finisher Naomi Herman, as well as Walsh's duo and Findlay's Ava Beam for the 2023 individual title.
As a team, Hillsdale will depend on a young pack to rise to the occasion in what, for many runners, will be their first-ever G-MAC Championships. Freshmen Savannah Fraley, Anna Stirton, Eleanor Clark and Megan Roberts, along with returners Vera Thompson, Kayla Loescher and Brynn Edison, will need their best 6K races of 2023 to keep the Chargers in the mix with Walsh and others for a top three spot, as well as pushing Cedarville for the team crown.
Men's Preview
The 2023 season has been an encouraging one for the Chargers men's cross country team, as Hillsdale has strung together several impressive finishes, but the Chargers face one of their toughest tests yet in a conference race that includes some of the top teams in the Midwest Region.
The favorite is defending champion Walsh, ranked 14th in NCAA DII in the most recent USTFCCCA poll. The Cavaliers lost 2022 race winner Zach Kreft but haven't missed a beat, with a great pack led by individual title contenders Mitchel Dunham, Noah Graham and Drew Monahan.
While Walsh looks likely to run away with the title, there are several sleepers, including Tiffin, which has a great 1-2 punch in the lead pack in junior Talel Khafi and senior Nathaniel Ondracek, and Cedarville, which has a strong squad led by Isaiah Kelly. There are a multitude of relevant teams in the mix, including Findlay, which has two top individual contenders in Noah Fisher and Jordan Foster, and Northwood, led by juniors Carson Laney and Josh Jones.
Hillsdale is right in the mix in the chasing pack behind Walsh with one of their fastest teams and best packs in a decade. No Chargers athlete had gone as fast as Alex Mitchell and Micah Vanderkooi did in the Lewis Crossover on Oct. 7 since All-American Joey Humes in 2019, and both will be in contention for All-G-MAC honors. The Chargers' real strength, however, lies in its pack -- as juniors Richie Johnston, Ross Kuhn and Donny McArdle have all gone under 25:30 in an 8K this season to give Hillsdale a competitive scoring five, and freshman Caleb Youngstedt has also broken the 26 minute mark to give the Chargers additional depth. Hillsdale will be competing for its first top three finish in the G-MAC since 2019 after three straight years of fourth-place finishes.