Sophomore Molly Gniady and junior Dillon Rice posted career-best times and finished among the Foresters' top five runners at Augustana College's Brissman-Lundeen Invitational on Friday. The Lake Forest women finished 13th and the men eighth in the 27-team field.
Gniady completed the 6-kilometer course in 26:00.8 and was 151st out of 324 runners in the race. The Foresters' top finisher was sophomore Yaneli Guajardo, who placed eighth overall in 22:45.8, the third-fastest time in program history. Senior Emily Staufer was next on the team and her time of 25:19.8 was good for 119th place while junior Estafania Ramirez finished 127th in 25:28.1. Gniady was Lake Forest's fourth runner and sophomore Audrey Paglia rounded out the top five, placing 187th in 26:46.9
Rice was the fifth runner on the men's team and finished 110th out of 330 competitors overall with a time of 27:46.8. The team's top runner was senior Jorge Villanueva, whose 11th-place time of 25:47.2 was a career-best and ranks fourth in school history. Fellow senior Christian Aldana was next in 38th with a time of 26:41.4 and junior Philip Wilson was 60th in 27:04.3 in his season debut. Freshman Christian Reyes finished in 27:32.3 and was the 92nd runner to cross the line.
North Central College was the women's team champion with 67 points, 45 fewer than runner-up Carroll University. The Foresters' 427 points were just behind 12th-place Webster University (408) and ahead of 14th-place Central Methodist University (435). The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point placed first on thee men's side with just 43 points while Olivet Nazarene University was second with 95. Lake Forest tallied 249 points to finish between Carroll (211) and Benedictine University (254).
The Foresters will have a weekend off of competition before traveling to Appleton, Wisconsin, for Lawrence University's Gene Davis Invitational on Saturday, October 6. The meet will be held at Reid Municipal Golf Course and will begin at 10:30 a.m.
