ST. JOSEPH, Minn. – Morgan Pierce has had some big performances over the last year and a half for the College of Saint Benedict cross country team, but Friday afternoon’s may have been the biggest.
For the second straight meet, Pierce finished in the top four out of more than 300 runners Friday at the Blugold Invite, and she ran the second-best time in CSB cross country history. For her big performance, Pierce is this week’s CSB Athlete of the Week.
Last season, Pierce jumped all the way to sixth in school history when she ran a 22:51 6K at the Carleton Invite. This season, after running at altitude and then in extreme heat and humidity, Pierce finally got ideal running conditions to go get another personal best Friday afternoon in Colfax, Wis.
Pierce ran with the head pack the whole way, and finished the 327-woman race in fourth. Her time of 22:12.9 was just over a second out of third, and just six seconds behind winner Sam Slattery – a UW-Eau Claire junior who also narrowly bested Pierce at the Auggie Invite. That time is also the second-best 6K time in CSB history, and is just five seconds off the record, held by two-time All-American Leah Wurm ’05, who was just inducted into the Saint Benedict Athletics Hall of Fame.
Friday’s time marked a personal best of 39 seconds for Pierce, who was one of just two runners inside the top 10 not part of a ranked Division III team or a Division II squad. It marked her fourth top-10 performance of the season, and helped CSB finish eighth out of 25 teams. The seven teams ahead of Saint Benedict Friday were Division II or ranked in Division III.
Pierce and her teammates have one more tune-up race before the 2018 MIAC Championships. The team is off this weekend, then heads to Oshkosh, Wis., on Saturday, Oct. 13, for the Oshkosh Invite.
