Saturday was the Monon Bell football game for 99% of Wabash, but for those 1% of us that traveled the four hours to Grand Rapids, Michigan Friday night, Saturday was the NCAA DIII Great Lakes Cross Country Regional. The Redpack, as some readers may know by now, brought the Calvin Knights’ 17-year Regional streak to an end this weekend with a commanding lead of 60-79 points. Thus bringing down the longest lasting streak of ANY SPORT in NCAA history, and all on Calvin’s own home course. The last time Wabash won was in 1996 before the Knights took over for almost two complete decades.

While the weather seemed to be sunny and favorable down in Greencastle for the Monon Bell, conditions at Calvin were less than favorable with gloomy skies and colder weather. The Redpack was led by FIJI brother Dalton Boyer ’14 with a second place over all (25:14.7), 4 seconds back of the Regional Champ. Second for the team was Jared Burris ’15 in 25:33.1, Billy McManus ’15 was third in 25:36.5, Adam Togami ’16 was fourth in 25:37.5, and Nick Boyce ’15 was the last scorer for the team with a time of 25:42.5. First year runners here at Wabash who came in 6th and 7th respectively to round out the full team were Fabian House ’16 in 25:56.3 and Mason McKinney in 26:19.0. The gap time between Wabash’s #1 and #5 runners was a total of 28 seconds, and a great gap time to have in comparison to some other teams. Of the 7 Wabash Men that ran this weekend, 6 managed to crack the top 35 and claim All-Region Honors on top of their team victory.

Here is a good question to answer I’m sure some people reading this are asking: Why not go to Wabash’s biggest tradition and rivalry, the Monon Bell game? Simple answer, No one expected it to be a close game, as Wabash was predicted to win for the 5th straight year. Wabash’s cross country team was looking to have an eventful, history making race that would take good racing by the athletes to win. Before Regionals Wabash had managed to beat the Knights at the Notre Dame Invitational earlier in the season. Similarly the Knights had beat Wabash by 1 point at the Oshkosh meet that contained over 500 runners. So while Wabash football had 4 previous years of blowouts and another one expected, cross country had the ability to either make history for itself, or allow Calvin to continue to make its own history. Wabash made history Saturday. Wabash Football made history as well by having one of the few 5-year streaks in the Wabash-DePauw rivalry with a score of 35-21. Congrats.

WAF