Bloomington, IN - This past weekend, the University of Michigan-Dearborn men's and women's cross country teams traveled down to Indiana University and competed in their final meet of the season, the NIRCA National Club Cross Country Championship. On the continuously rolling hills of an old golf course, now only used for NCAA and Big Ten races, the UM-D runners had their work cut out for them as they faced some big-name club teams like Oregon, Penn State and Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Similar to golf, in cross country, the lowest team score of a meet wins the race. The first-place runner scores one point, the second scores two and so on. Then, a team's top five fastest runners' places are added together to get the team score.

For the women's six-kilometer (3.75 miles) race, the Wolves were led by sophomore Ana Kerekes, running a personal best time of 24:56 for a 17th place finish. Coming in second for the women was Teresa Cook in 41st place at 27:31, followed by Julia Stulock in 53rd, Katie Samson in 69th and Joanna Chudzinski in 75th place. With a team total of 186 points, the women placed seventh overall, beating out Eastern Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ball State, Michigan State and Washington University.

On the men's side, four UM-D runners competed in the eight-kilometer race, a distance just shy of five miles. They were led by freshman Brian Williams with 32:44, good for 141st place. Senior Bilal Ghalib followed closely in 33:29 for 147th place. Another freshman, Eric Stuart, came in 151st place and junior Justin Opferman closed out the team with a 161st place finish.

Overall, this season was an incredible success. On Sept. 30th, the team hosted its first-ever race at Ford Field Park in Dearborn. The men and women fielded stronger teams than any previous season with Kerekes being the fastest woman ever to maize and blue. The team competed in five races, more than any other fall season.

Yet for the runners, improving their times and running more races makes up only a small part of UM-D cross country. Since the team competes as a club and not as varsity, the atmosphere is more relaxed than a typical team environment. Stuart said he joined, "Because I know I'll get to spend a lot of time with a group of great people. It turns five mile runs and 800 mile road trips into a lot of fun."

Although the official season is over, the team plans to keep together running a few times a week and looks forward to a strong spring cross country season.