Go Johnnies Challenge Thank You!

First off, thank you so much to those of you who were able to support us during the Go Johnnies Challenge. Every year we are blown away by how supportive and generous our alumni are, and we are very lucky and grateful to have you all behind us. Your support will go a long way in helping to continue to provide a great experience for our athletes, starting with new cross country uniforms and warmups for our team this fall as well as our overnight trip to Illinois in a couple of weeks for this year’s Augustana Interregional Invitational with our entire team, which will be one of the best meets in the country.

St. Olaf Invitational Recap

The season is off and running (no pun intended), and we had our first 8K of the season about two weeks ago at St. Olaf. We were missing a couple of folks due to injury/illness, and it was an incredibly warm day for our first 8K of the season hovering around 80 degrees, but overall it was a very solid result for us finishing in 4th as a team while also getting a preview of the course for this year’s MIAC Championships later this season. You can see a screenshot of the team results below, as well as a few pictures from the meet where we debuted our new cross country uniforms.

J Club Hall of Honor & Homecoming Festivities

In addition to our next meet at the UW-Eau Claire Blugold Invitational this Friday evening, which we are very much looking forward to as Eau Claire is one of the best courses we will run on this season, this should also be a very fun weekend as we induct Tim Miles ‘76, Chuck Ceronsky ‘70 and Mike Fahey ‘75 into the St. John’s J-Club Hall of Honor on Saturday evening (October 5th). The evening kicks off at 5:00pm in Guild Hall and features dinner/drinks and a short induction presentation and Q&A session with all 13 of SJU’s 2024 inductees. Registration is still open and you can sign-up to attend here: 2024 Hall of Honor (csbsju.edu).

The festivities for us will begin earlier that day, though, because as I mentioned in an earlier blog post this fall, we’d like to invite ALL alumni to come and join us at our cross country practice on Saturday morning at 9:00AM in the indoor track to “interview” both Tim and Chuck Ceronsky with our current team members before either going for a run on campus or staying back and socializing with Tim and Chuck if a run is not of interest to you. I’d imagine a group of us will venture up to the Refectory for breakfast afterwards as well, and between the SJU Football game vs. Augsburg and many other Homecoming festivities, there will be plenty to do up here between practice and the official Hall of Honor dinner later that evening.

I have heard from quite a few alumni who have told me they will be at practice as well as the dinner, and I’m looking forward to what should be a very fun weekend of celebration.

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE

We have done two additional St. Michael’s Games events since my last blog post: Golf and the Home Run Derby.

We did 18 x 400m at 5K pace with 60 seconds recovery for our Golf Workout, and experience paid off big time this year as senior Aidan Thomas came away as our King of Good Pace with a score of 7 after all 18 reps. Believe it or not, there were quite a few guys who in years past would’ve put themselves in great position to be our Duffer, also known as King of Bad Pace, but when it was all said and done it was freshmen Sebastian Hanson who earned the Duffer title with a score of 36.

Our winning team was Team Beans with an average score of 14 amongst their team members, which at first glance Tim and I were sort of disappointed by, but, after thinking about it, an average of less than 1 second off per rep for your whole team isn’t so bad.

Our 2024 Golf Champion and King of Good Pace, senior Aidan Thomas, as he finishes his 18th rep and secures the title.

This year’s Home Run Derby was shaping up to be quite the competition with our top 3 sluggers from last year all returning in defending champion Vincent Kaluza, runner-up Nate Courchane and last year’s 3rd place finisher Ethan Leonard. In keeping with tradition we had our defending champ, Vincent, go last to make sure there was the proper amount of hype and pressure on him to defend his title, and at the end of the day it was not meant to be. Coming out of nowhere, freshman Connor Dow won the Sultan of Swat title with 10 home runs and 19 runs batted in. His St. Michael’s Games teammate Ethan Leonard was close behind with 9 home runs and 15 RBIs, and another freshman, Collin Berg, rounded out our podium with 8 HRs and 19 RBIs.

Special shoutout to senior AJ Skinner who hit his very first home run during the home run derby this year after three previous years of coming up short. What an accomplishment.