JOHN CRAGG
We celebrate the college career of our all-time cross country and track and field great when John Cragg is inducted as a charter member of our Saint John’s Hall of Honor on Saturday, October 5.
Saint John’s had a cross country team in 1938, 1947-1950, and 1952-1956. In fact, Macalester was the only MIAC school with a program in 1962 and 1963. Saint John’s resurrected our sport in 1965 with Jim Smith coaching the team. In 1967, freshmen John Cragg (St. Paul Cretin) and Jeff Brain (Seattle Prep) and sophomore transfer Chuck Ceronsky (Minneapolis De La Salle) arrived on campus. Add freshman Joe Skaja (St. Cloud Tech) one year later, and Saint John’s quickly became one of the top small college teams in the nation with 8th place team finishes at the 1968 NAIA Championship and again 8th place finishes at the 1969 and 1970 NCAA College Division Championships. College Division at that time was all teams that would be Division II or Division III today. Pretty good.
My brother, Bill, graduated from Cretin in 1969, and so he and John were teammates for two years. In 1972, the spring of my senior year at Cretin, I asked Bill, who was enrolled at Minnesota and already the Cretin cross country and track and field coach, where he thought I should go to college. His answer was short: “if you are looking for great a place to study and run, you should go to Saint John’s.”
Cragg, Ceronsky, Brain, Skaja and their teammates had made Saint John’s “a great place to run”. Every serious runner knew it, and I am confident that many of us, had it not been for them, would have landed somewhere other than Collegeville.
Beyond his running, my brother admired John so much in every other way, as did my Saint John’s teammate Dave Lyndgaard (SJU ’74) who got to run with him during his freshman year. Dave told me that John had once told him that, while being recruited by the University of Minnesota, Coach Roy Griak had put his arm around his shoulders and told him “If you go up there (Saint John’s), you’ll never do anything”. (John’s high school bests were 4:29 and 9:43.)
Given Saint John’s spotty history theretofore, Coach Griak may have been justified in that estimation. But John would go on to finish second individually at the NCAA College Division Cross Country Championships as a junior in 1969 and as a senior in 1970. By virtue of those finishes he qualified to run in the University Division Championship (today’s Division I race) both years.
As a junior, in a race won by Gerry Lindgren at New York City’s Van Cortland Park, he finished 49th. Five Big Ten runners beat John that day, including two from Minnesota.
As a senior, the six-mile race was run at Williamsburg, Virginia. Oregon’s Steve Prefontaine won in 28:00. Michigan State’s Ken Popejoy was the first Big Ten finisher in 20th place at 28:05. John finished 21st in 28:56. Pretty good.
Come and help us celebrate John Cragg at the Hall of Honor awards banquet on Saturday, October 5. The event will be in Guild Hall (The Old Gym) at 5 PM. The link to register is below. $75 if you register by September 21. $100. Thereafter. We hope to see you there! http://sjualum.csbsju.edu/s/1433/gid3/interior.aspx?sid=1433&pgid=5188&gid=3&cid=8048&ecid=8048&post_id=0
SEPTEMBER 7 LUTHER ALL-AMERICAN INVIATONAL
We kicked off our 2019 season without a bang at Luther’s All-American Invitational last Saturday. Some raced well, but we finished a distant third of nine behind Luther and Augustana of Rock Island. Our team had a very good summer of training, but when I examined the results on our long drive home, I saw that runners from other schools who also raced last year averaged 32 seconds faster while our Saint John’s runners averaged 7 seconds slower. At that point, I quit examining results. We had a very flat race and underperformed. Next! We are Carleton on Saturday at 10:30 AM. A great field on a great 8000 meter course. The MIAC Championship will also be there on November 2
