Hillsboro, Kan. - Freshman Jacob Heil (Wichita, Kan.) and junior Justin Ball (Welda, Kan.) were the only two cross country runners to compete this past weekend at the Jock's Nitch Invitational at Jones Park hosted by Emporia State University.

"This was a very successful meet for us, even if that's not overtly evident in the results," said Head Coach Dan Swaney. "Coming into Emporia, our home meet had been the best race we'd had so far. But the Emporia course is tougher than ours and it was a very windy day on top of that,yet nearly everyone ran close to or faster than they did at our home meet."

Heil led the Bluejays as he finished in 62^nd place with a time of 28:47, while Ball finished in 89^th place with a time of 30:45.

"Jacob only ran 17 seconds slower and Justin was 23 seconds behind his time last week," said Swaney. "So with the difficulty of the course and especially with the wind as strong as it was, this was a much better race for us.

"The down side to the whole day was that we were missing three of our runners. Senior Dan Sigley (Cheney, Wash.) had a funeral to go to, and sophomore Matt Spurgeon (Wichita, Kan.) and freshman Tim Roesch (Quinter, Kan.) are still recovering from injuries.

"At this point in the season, although I really want everyone to run every meet,I think it's more important to have people do what they can to get healthy and be able to run later in the season when we'll need them the most, even if that means missing a meet now. The sooner they can get their bodies healed up the sooner they will be able to get back to training and run their best at conference when it counts."

The Bluejays will host the annual Alumni Homecoming Run Saturday Oct. 10^th, at 8 a.m. before travel to McPherson, Kan. to compete in the McPherson College Open at noon.