SDSU Men 6th at X-C Midwest Regional

[JackJD]

Lead by Joel Reichow's third-place finish, the Jackrabbit Men's Cross Country Team finished 6th at the NCAA D1 Midwest Regional. All of State's neighbors finished behind the Jacks including Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. A link to the complete results is below (women's results presented first...scroll down for men's results).

Recall that on 10/29/16, the SDSU men won the school's 35th conference title in Cross Country. Summit League teams in the 26-team Midwest Regional race included NDSU at 19, and USD, last.

Note the strength of the Jackrabbit team: our 7th runner was 93rd. NDSU's top runner was 90th. There is presently a HUGE difference between the prowess of the SDSU Men compared to local rivals NDSU and USD.

Link to the full results for the meet (women's results presented first following by men's results):
http://wayzatatiming.com/crosscountr...MidwestRegion/

Go Jacks!!

[JackJD]

Re: SDSU Men 6th at X-C Midwest Regional

It's difficult to send individual runners to the National Meet every year and even more difficult to achieve All-America status. Joel Reichow, all ready an All-American, stands to improve on his past super performances. Our second runner, sophomore Ayub Kassim, finished 26th and may just miss the cut for the national race...not sure at this time. But he's within an inch of getting there...and just a sophomore!

[BTownJack]

Re: SDSU Men 6th at X-C Midwest Regional

Sorry for my ignorance and laziness to go look it up. But how many teams qualify for nationals? Seems like a 6th place finish would have been really close to qualifying as a team and move onto nationals?

[JackJD]

Re: SDSU Men 6th at X-C Midwest Regional

The top two teams in each region auto qualify. Then the NCAA selects a number of at-large teams. Thirty-one teams qualified, each having 7 runners. Additionally, 38 individuals whose teams didn't make it, qualified (guys like SDSU's Joel Reichow). All of the 38 individual qualifiers finished in the top 25 of their respective regional meet -- a top 25 finish is not necessarily a cut off but the cut off usually ends up somewhere in the middle 20s of a regional meet (and that's why I pointed out in the second post in this thread, the following: "Our second runner, sophomore Ayub Kassim, finished 26th and may just miss the cut for the national race...not sure at this time. But he's within an inch of getting there...and just a sophomore!"

From the Midwest Region, Oklahoma State and Tulsa finished 1 - 2 so they're in. At large qualifiers selected from our region are Illinois and Iowa State, finishing at the regional 3 & 4 respectively. Bradley was 5th in our region and they weren't selected. SDSU's Joel Reichow, the third place runner at the regional meet, qualified individually.


Link to the article about the 2016 qualifiers for both the men's and women's nationals: http://www.runblogrun.com/2016/11/nc...m-ncaaorg.html You can scroll down in the article and see the qualifiers. Individual qualifiers usually go deep into the teens and can go into the 20s because individuals who ran on qualifying teams are in so some of the top finishers whose teams didn't make it (e.g. Reichow for the Jacks) qualify individually.

SDSU has always been a highly respected name in cross country and it won't be long before SDSU will qualify as a team for the NCAAs.