The Illinois Valley Community College cross country program showed improvement at the Tom Hoffman Invitational hosted by the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater on Saturday.
The team finished in 8th place in the field of 104 runners at the race featuring NCAA and NJCAA programs. The team's average finish time of 37:49 in the 8K race is nearly a minute faster than in last week's Spartan Classic 8K in Batavia.
This week the team was led by Christian Yepsen (34:13.0) of Princeton and Azael Vargas (37:56.4) of rural Tonica.
"It was great to see Christian and Azael shave some time off last week's season opening race. Hopefully, we can continue this trend through the rest of the season," said Matt Baker, IVCC head cross country coach.
Rounding out the rest of the team were Tafara Kaguru (38:38.2), Zvikomborero Bingura (38:43.0), and Shingai Manyonga (39:39.0).