2023 NCAA North Region Championships
L to R: Maxwell Kuzara, Max McCoy, Jacob Malecha, Ethan Leonard, Cole Stencel, Lloyd Young, Dylan Bartness, Vincent Kaluza, Aiden Chalmers, Tommy Allen, Nick St. Peter

NCAA NORTH REGION CHAMPIONSHIPS RECAP

Thank you to those of you who made it out to our NCAA North Region meet in Colfax, Wis. last week! The course was in great shape, and a little sleet during the race never hurt anybody. Overall, I think it was our best race of the season as a team. Obviously it is hard to go seven for seven, but I’d say that five or six of our guys had their best races of the season, with freshmen Cole Stencel having an off-day after getting a side cramp around 3k in. As a team, we ran better than at conference two weeks ago. Obviously missing two guys from our top five, Carter Grove (25:55 at Regions last year) and Eamon Cavanaugh (26:03 at Regions last year), hurts as well. There is no doubt that Division III is better than ever, and we’d like to think our region is the toughest, or close to the toughest, region in the country. We are very excited for the future with this young group! Here is how we finished (course was 8,009 meters):

16th Lloyd Young (SR) 24:51
87th Tommy Allen (SR) 26:08
95th Aiden Chalmers (SO) 26:17
97th Vincent Kaluza (FR) 26:17
99th Nick St. Peter (SO) 26:18
108th Max McCoy (FR) 26:39
115th Cole Stencel (FR) 26:50

NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS PREVIEW

Senior Lloyd Young qualified for his 3rd straight NCAA Championship meet and races tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM CST. We came and raced at the Pre-National meet earlier this season, so Lloyd got to preview the course then and is excited to cap off his tremendous Saint John’s career tomorrow. The course is extremely hilly — what they call a true cross country course. We’re all for it! Here is the link to the live stream: DIII Men's Cross Country Championship - DIII Men's Cross Country - | NCAA.com

St. Ben’s seniors Fiona Smith and Annie Kiolbasa race right after Lloyd at 11:00 AM CST. Annie makes her first Nationals appearance, while Fiona looks to follow-up her runner-up finish from last year. Fiona enters the race as one of the favorites after going unbeaten all season. Should be the same live stream link. Hope you can tune in!

ST. MICHAEL’S GAMES UPDATE

Now for what was promised last week. We’ve completed four additional events since the last update. Egg toss, home run derby, golf and a pumpkin carving contest. Brief summaries on each are below!

Egg Toss
Debatably the most exciting St. Michael’s Games event, as well as one of the events with the longest history on the team dating back to it’s beginnings in the 1979 Saint John’s cross country season, the egg toss again did not disappoint this year with some great tosses, as well as some not so great tosses. Juniors Ethan Leonard (Chaska) and A.J. Skinner (Rogers) took home this year’s title individually with a toss of 3.08 seconds of hang time, a new addition to our Saint John’s cross country all-time egg toss list at #15. In the team race, Coffey Beans again grabbed the 1st place finish with 9.29s of total hang-time between all team members — winning each of our first three St. Michael’s Games events in impressive fashion. Picture / video highlights of the event are below, as well as a look at the all-time list.

2023 Egg Toss Champions - Ethan Leonard and A.J. Skinner

Junior Eamon Cavanaugh and sophomore Nick St. Peter show excellent egg toss form as official egg toss timer, and timer of every single Saint John’s cross country egg toss attempt in history, Tim Miles, looks on.

Lloyd Young & Max McCoy ‘go for it’ in an exhibition toss, but go home disappointed.

Egg Toss History - All Time Hang Times

Austin Lick & Luke Wittman (2015) - 4.24 seconds
Andrew Stevens & Ryan Noack (2007) - 3.59s
Dan Greenwood & Jeff Doll (2006) - 3.56s
Dustin Franta & Justin Rose (2007) - 3.50s
Austin Lick & Luke Wittman (2014) - 3.46s
Maxwell Kuzara & Charlie Raasch (2015) - 3.37s
Pat Martin & Luke Wittman (2013) - 3.34s
Kris Jungels & Paul Chestovich (1989) - 3.32s
David Forster & Erik Bieging (2009) - 3.31s
Brian Knutson & Jeb Myers (1995) - 3.28s

2023’s Top Ten Egg Toss Hang Times

Ethan Leonard & AJ Skinner - 3.08s
Lloyd Young & Max McCoy - 2.96s
Jacob Gathje & Aidan Thomas 2.75s
Tommy Allen & Joe Gathje - 2.70s
James Leon & Jack Montgomery - 2.53s
Aiden Chalmers & Carter Grove - 2.38s
Aidan Thomas & Joe Coffey - 2.32s
AJ Karn & Jacob Malecha - 2.21s
Cole Stencel & Peyton Martinek - 2.03s
Connor O’Brien & Vincent Kaluza - 2.01s

Golf Workout
This year we did 12 x 400m at 5K pace w/ 90 seconds of recovery for the golf workout, which also has roots back to the 1979 Saint John’s cross country season. Our “King of Good Pace” title was highly contested this year, with three guys being tied at a score of 6 after the 12 reps. Thus, a run-off between senior Lloyd Young (Bloomington Kennedy), sophomore Nick St. Peter (Maple Grove) and sophomore Jacob Malecha (New Prague) ensued as the tiebreaker. After each of the three competitors ran an additional rep by himself, Lloyd Young came out on top with his tiebreaker rep being just 2.17 seconds off compared to St. Peter’s 3.97s and Malecha’s 5.47s.

Lloyd was our 2021 and 2022 Duffer (King of Bad Pace), so his win this year really avenged his previous two losses and got the monkey off his back. Speaking of bad pace, this year’s Duffer / King of Bad Pace was freshmen Jack Montgomery from Orono, who finished up with a score of 22 — nearly two seconds per rep. Yikes! Los Comodores came away with the team win with an average of just 9 seconds off per team member for the whole workout, which honestly seemed like a lot to me and Tim. Must be bad coaching.

Sr. Lloyd Young leads the way during the 2023 golf workout as the fall colors start to show in Collegeville.

Home Run Derby

A traditionally very funny event that really gives the guys who grew up playing baseball a chance to show off, this year we gave each guy 5 outs (anything other than a home run). Freshman Vincent Kaluza came away as Champion, our “Sultan of Swat”, with 29 home runs, edging out the other podium finishers, Carter Grove and Nate Courchane. Los Comodores won the team title with an average of 5.4 home runs per guy. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, we had several “Sultans of Swish” this year who hit 0 homeruns. Better luck next year, guys.

Sophomore Nick St. Peter gets ridiculed by the peanut gallery.

Pumpkin Carving Contest

In attempt to drum up some Halloween spirit, we decided to bring back the pumpkin carving contest this year as a St. Michael’s Games event, with myself and my wife, Manon, as well as Tim and his wife (fresh off of their big day), Sue, serving as the official judges.

In the end, after some contentious debate amongst judges, team Coffey Bean's’ pumpkin, modeled after the class of 2023’s Nate Clausing who puked after almost every race last year, came away victorious. Believe it or not, it was also hard for the judges to decide which pumpkin was worst, as there were two pumpkins that were both, shall we say, not great. In the end we decided to award last place honors to both pumpkins, one of which was carved by the Flying Clutchmen and depicted a Flying Dutchmen ship (a nod to their team member Lars Molenkamp, who is a freshmen this year and joins us from Almere, Netherlands) and the other which was carved by Team James Leon and depicted the Fall Finale course. While we applauded both teams’ effort and their excitement for their Dutch teammate / the Fall Finale, both pumpkins basically just looked like big blobs were carved out of them and it was hard to make out what the teams were each going for without an explanation from them. A fun event nonetheless!