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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

Gall places 3rd as team finishes 5th in meet

The IU women's cross country team finished fifth this weekend at the Big Ten Championships at the University of Iowa. Iowa held the meet at its newly dedicated Ashton Cross Country course. The six-kilometer event featured four nationally ranked top-30 teams, including the Hoosiers.\nSophomore Jessica Gall continued her impressive season and crossed the line first for the women in third place. For the first 3k of the race, Gall ran in a pack with the sixth through tenth place runners. She then broke out of the pack and moved to fourth at the 4k mark. Gall outkicked the then 3rd place runner, University of Illinois senior Jaime Turilli, with 300 meters to go and that secured her third place finish. \nGall finished in a time of 21 minutes, 2 seconds, 29-seconds behind the winner of the race -- freshman Danette Doetzel of Michigan State. \nSophomore Kristin Whitezell and junior Kelly Siefker ran together for most of the race and finished No. 12 and No. 20 respectively.\n"It was the Big Tens, so we knew we had to get up in the front and go," Whitezell said.\nIU coach Judy Wilson was particularly impressed by Whitezell's performance.\n"Kristin is our fourth runner in practice and for her to move up and be our second runner was great," Wilson said.\nWith her third-place finish, Gall earned first-team all Big Ten honors, while Whitezell's 12th place finish gave her second team all-conference honors.\n"Jess and Kristin ran really good races," Wilson said.\nRounding out the scoring for the Hoosiers was a pair of upperclassman. Senior Larra Overton finished 46th in a time of 22:39. Senior Mindy Peterson ran 22:53 and placed 54th, which was fifth best on the IU squad.\nMichigan continued its dominance in the Big Ten with its third first place finish in a row. Michigan State and Illinois tied for 2nd with 85 points. The University of Minnesota finished 4th with 133 points, beating the Hoosiers by two -- who had a team total of 135.\n"We wanted to finish a lot higher and the team is capable of placing higher," Gall said. "We need to be more hungry and aggressive, but luckily we have two more weeks at regionals and hopefully nationals to do that."\nThe Hoosiers will take this weekend off and then compete at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional at Buhr Park in Ypislanti, Mich., Nov 13.\n-- Contact staff writer Ryan Corazza at rcorazza@indiana.edu.

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