Southwestern finishes 22nd at Nationals

Richmond, Virg. — The five-freshmen Southwestern Spartans cross country team wrapped up the 2024 season Saturday at the NJCAA Division II Cross Country National Championship in Pole Green Park.

The group is the first since 2020 to qualify as a team for the race.

The Spartans came into the national tournament ranked 19th in the most recent national poll, but placed 22nd with 638 points. The total field was 41 teams.

“For a group of five freshmen, three of which had never run cross country before this season, I thought this was a great result for us,” SWCC coach Scott Vicker said. “Coming in ranked 19th, we really wanted to beat that ranking. But I think this was a very fair reflection of our team and is a result we can be proud of.”

Though the course was fast, it was slightly over the 8K distance making times slower than they should have been.

Brandon Briley of Creston continued to lead the pack, though narrowly as Zach Roome ran his best race of the year.

The two finished together, Briley placing 86th in 27:36.3 and Roome taking 87th in 27:36.9.

Dillon Starlin of Creston placed third for the Spartans, finishing 159th in 28:38. Cameron Swapsy ran 28:46.8 for 166th place and Jacob Driskill of East Union finished 232nd in 30:07.5.

“I thought Zach and Cam, both, ran by far their best races of the season. Their times don’t reflect how much better they ran Saturday because of the extra distance, but they both ran great,” Vicker said. “Dillon and Jacob both ran times that would have lined up right with their best times adjusting for the extra distance. Brandon didn’t have his best day on the course Saturday, but he battled to the very end. Just getting that experience of racing at the national championships was important.”

As a team, the Spartans moved up throughout the field during the course of the race. At the 2K mark, the Spartans sat in 25th place as a team, dropping to 26th by the halfway point. With just 2K to go in the race, Southwestern was 24th with 668 points. As a collective, the Spartans gained 30 places over the final 2K of the race to move up into 22nd place. Southwestern finished 25 points ahead of Region 11 opponent NIACC, which entered the weekend ranked 17th in the country.

“Going into the weekend, one of our big goals was to beat NIACC,” Vicker said. “NIACC was picked ahead of us in the preseason poll, then beat us by 18 points at Indian Hills and just 1 point at the Region 11 Championships. So we knew we’d been closing the gap on them and really wanted to finish ahead of them. To be able to do that on a day where Brandon finished 30 or so spots behind where we expected is a testament to how well the other four guys ran. It was a total team effort on Saturday, which was really exciting.

“This was a great building block moment for us,” Vicker said. “This team came so far from the beginning of the season. I’m excited to continue working with them and continue building around them. Hopefully we can take a big step forward next year.”

The Spartans are set to return all but Starlin from this year’s team, as he will graduate in the spring. After not running cross country or track in high school, Starlin finished his Spartan cross country career just missing making the program’s all-time top 20 performance list. He ran his best time of 27:48.5 at the Region 11 Championships.

Southwestern contributed to this story.