Creston alumni lead Spartans

OTTUMWA - Southwestern freshman Dillon Starlin highlighted the day Friday at the Indian Hills Invitational with his new 8K personal best.

Starlin was the second Spartan harrier across the finish line, trailing Brandon Briley, who once again led the Spartans.

However, Starlin was the lone Spartan to improve his time from the previous week’s Seminole Valley Stampede. Starlin ran 28:03.1, a 34-second improvement from the previous week. He finished 32nd in the 75-runner field. The time is only 3 seconds over the individual national-qualifying time.

As a team, Southwestern finished seventh in the 10-team field, scoring 170 points. The field featured four teams ranked nationally in NJCAA Division II, plus two teams ranked nationally in NJCAA Division I.

The Spartans finished 37 points behind 18th-ranked NIACC and 24 points behind 11th-ranked Heartland.

“Overall, this was not our best day by any means. I didn’t back off the guys at all from our training block, and it was our second race in just six days. So there were definitely some tired legs going into this race,” SWCC coach Scott Vicker said. “That said, I still saw some encouraging things Friday. Dillon ran another solid race. I know he was not satisfied with his time, but to run that well on a day where he didn’t have his best stuff was a positive sign. The same can be said for Brandon.”

Briley finished 13th with his time of 26:48.3, just 11 seconds off his time from the previous week.

Zach Roome was the third finisher for the Spartans in 29:10.6 for 43rd place. Jacob Driskill finished 48th in 29:45.5, and Cameron Swapsy finished 58th in 31:12.0. Ottumwa hit a record-high temperature for the day, giving runners an added variable during the race.

“We wanted to try a little bit different strategy on Friday, knowing we would be right back on this same course in two weeks for regionals,” Vicker said. “This course tends to run fast for the first mile, so I wanted the guys to get out quicker than normal. Unfortunately, they got out quite a bit faster than I had even planned for them, and so they were battling a lot of lactic in the second half of the race. That fast pace, combined with the already tired legs and the temperature made the second half of the race a real struggle for the guys. But, I think we all learned something valuable. We know this was not our best performance, and we still ran pretty decent. So I’m excited to see how much of a difference some better weather, fresh legs, and better race execution makes for us.”

Southwestern returns to Indian Hills on Friday, Oct. 25, for the Region 11 Championships. The Spartan men will run at 4:45 p.m.