Senior Maria Baldwin led all Eastern runners by finishing in 62nd place with a time of 21 minutes 21 seconds, which set the all-time Eastern 6K record.

Eastern competed hard but ended up finishing in 23rd out of 28 for the women and 22nd for the men.

Junior Ali Gutt ran well and earned a career top five Eastern 6K time with her 72nd place with a time of 21:29. Senior Caroline Collet placed for the women too in 187th place.

The season is finished as the OVC Championship wrapped up the last regular season competition for many of the Eastern runners Oct. 28, while a handful of runners were sent down to Iowa State for the NCAA Midwest Regional meet.

After an improved third-place finish for the women’s team in the conference meet and another fourth-place finish for the men’s team, the team had many OVC honored runners.

Baldwin and senior Chris Orlow earned first-team All-OVC and freshman Dustin Hatfield earned second team All-OVC. They were the team leaders going into the regional meet.

The NCAA Midwest Regional meet marked the last meet for Eastern cross country for the 2017 cross country season. Both the men’s and women’s team sent runners to represent Eastern, with Chris Orlow leading eight other male runners and Maria Baldwin leading seven other runners.

Her season was once again very productive with a second-place finish in the opening meet of the year and first place finishes for EIU women throughout the year and a terrific conference race that gave her another first team All-OVC.

The men had to battle adversity as they competed in a 10K race instead of the 8K they are accustomed to.

For the men’s team, Chris Orlow led the team with his time of 30:21.32, which was good for 64th overall. Sophomore Marcus Skinner finished just outside the top 100 with a 102nd place finish with a time of 30:54.88. Redshirt freshman Matt Lay also finished just shy of top 100 with a 106th place finish.

Iowa State won both the men’s and women’s championship. Now that the season is completed, many Eastern runners head into preparation for the track and field season.

Alex Hartman can be reached at 581-2812 or aihartman@eiu.edu