Lions Compete at Jimmie Invite
The Trinity Bible College Lions cross country teams made a great showing at the Jimmie Invite on Friday, October 4th. Leading up to the meet, the teams had about three weeks of practice to improve their times and prepare for the competition. They took full advantage of this time, and their perseverance paid off.
The men's team saw great improvements in their personal times, which led them to qualifying as a team for the NCCAA DII National Championship for the second year in a row. The team qualified with a time of 2:54:52.1. Luke Jacob and Kaleb Renfro also joined Sam Jacob in qualifying for the National Championship with their individual times.
Sam Jacob, a senior, is still leading the men's team with his best time of 31:50.4. He is followed by Luke Jacob with a time of 32:47.6. Kaleb Renfro cut off an impressive 4 minutes on his time to reach his personal best of 33:26.2. Marcus Staley and Zach Bigart are next with the times of 37:19.4 and 39:28.5, respectively.
The women's team also saw the rewards of their hard work in this last meet. Chloe Jacob made a great improvement on her time once again to reach her personal best of 21:03.3. This ranks Chloe 4th in the NCCAA DII women's cross country rankings. Kersten Lucas also improved her time by almost exactly 2 minutes to reach a time of 24:56.4. She is followed by Arianna Bigart's time of 26:14.3.
Coach Thurber has been very expressive about how proud she is of her teams' accomplishments. In her words, "All our hard investments in training paid off at Jamestown this past week. We knew Chloe was fast going in and expected her to produce a fast time to pull her up in the rankings. I was also fully expecting our men's team to qualify for Nationals, but I did get a bit nervous when I saw our 5th man get lost on the course. Fortunately, our 6th man was still able to pull off a fast time and move into the 5th position for us. We also had two runners join Sam and Chloe in qualifying for Nationals on their own merit."
Looking Ahead
The TBC cross country teams will see their next competition when they head to the University of North Dakota for the Ron Pynn Invitational on Saturday, October 19th.
