Headlined by season-best times from most of the team, the women’s cross country team finished the Illinois State Invitational meet in fourth place out of six teams.

NIU completed the race finishing higher in the standings than Eastern Illinois and Northern Iowa. NIU had four runners finish in the top 30, led by sophomore Ali Olson. Head coach Greg Hipp saw runners perform well during the meet.

“We had improvements with our performances, times, as well as race execution,” Hipp said. “It was nice to see a step forward this week.”

Hipp also feels times will only continue to drop as the season goes on.

“We still have some pieces like Juliane [Totzke] not being able to compete this week coming back,” Hipp said. “It was an improvement but I still think we have more to show.”

Olson clocked in with a time of 18:19.24, which was enough for a 16th place finish out of 76 runners. The next Huskie to cross the finish line was junior Jamie Burr, finishing the 5K in 18:37.33 to take the 23rd spot.

Three spots behind her was Leah Raffety, timing in at 18:39.72. NIU’s fourth finisher was Claire McAuley, who took 29th place with a time of 18:45.44.

Carly Pederson was the last scoring Huskie to finish in the top 50, coming in at 19:08.81 in 46th place.

NIU takes a two-week break and will continue competition on Sept. 28 in Minnesota. With cooler temperatures forecasted for next week, the Huskies look to change up practices in the coming weeks.

“It is going to be nice having two weeks to kind of get back into a routine,” Hipp said. “As long as the weather is cooperating we should be able to have…more of a consistent practice time and get things back to normal.”