Meghan Heuer, junior cross country runner, has gone from the No. 5 Huskie runner to the top finisher since NIU opened the season on Aug. 6 at the NIU Open meet.

Going into the season, head coach Greg Hipp felt Heuer would be one of the Huskies’ top finishers throughout the season, but in her debut that was not what happened. During the NIU Open, Heuer did claim a sixth-place finish out of 32 runners, but was behind four other teammates. Hipp felt she had more in her than the finish.

“Out of the summer I expected she would be in this position [a top runner] right away, but the first month or so she kind of struggled to transition back into the season,” Hipp said. “But the last few weeks she has looked like herself again, so we knew she had trained hard over the summer but things just hadn’t started clicking yet.”

With four meets now under her belt, Heuer has transitioned, finishing in the top two twice for NIU. On Sept. 28 she was the second NIU runner to complete the Roy Griak Invitational. She finished the course behind Ali Olson during that

competition.

On Friday, Heuer was the top NIU runner for the first time this year when she took 22nd out of 238 runners. Her Bradley Pink Classic time of 21:40.00 is now in the record books as the second-best 6K time in school history. Heuer said Olson, team captain Jamie Burr and senior Claire McAuley are the vocal leaders of the Huskies and they have motivated her every day at practice.

“We have a close pack in practice,” Heuer said. “It is definitely nice and always good to have someone to run with…. I would be completely lost if I was not on a sports team. It helps a lot.”

She said early season workouts and the time she has put in lately are the reasons for her recent success.

“I think it has just been probably a lot of the training,” Heuer said. “Like I am finally catching up with all of my training.”

Hipp feels the recent positive results are only a preview of what could be in the near future for Heuer’s career.

“I think she finished this one [the Bradley Pink Classic] and found she still had something left at the end,” Hipp said. “This was a good confidence boost to get her on track again…. I think she should see from this that there is even more there, and she should be able to compete up with the top part of our conference meet. Hopefully in that top 15 range at least, and hopefully have some other teammates right around her and they can stay together, but certainly she has the capability of having a pretty meaningful MAC Championship if we can continue the progress she is making.”