A successful season with first-year Head Coach Logan Wells has the Bluffton University cross country team excited to get back to work this fall. The women took 4th at the Heartland Conference championships and the men took 6th. Although the 2020 outdoor track and field season was canceled due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the Beavers continued to put the work in on their own.

Bluffton bid adieu to six seniors who helped forge the groundwork for a program that had many of its top all-time performances during the past four years. Alexis Cash, the 2020 Kathryn E. Little Award winner as outstanding senior female athlete of the year, was a two-time Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference women's cross country champion the first female cross country athlete in school history to earn All-Region honors by placing in the top-35 at the NCAA DIII Great Lakes Regional Championship. Bailie Barrington was also a two-time First Team All-Heartland Conference honoree. The women placed second twice in the past four years to go along with a third place finish in 2017.

The men have three 6th place finishes at the conference on their resume the last three years following a 4th place finish in 2017. Dakota Frost fashioned an outstanding career for the Beavers, earning All-HCAC recognition his final three seasons, including first team honors as a sophomore. Also graduated is former Honorable Mention All-HCAC honoree Connor Gulick.

Junior Hope Nixon (Jamestown/Jamestown-Monroe) and sophomore Justine Lesniewski (Mantua/Crestwood) have worked hard to help fill the sizeable running shoes left by Cash, Barrington, Arie Cox and Tami Groff. They will be joined by an incoming group of eight freshmen this fall.

Junior Austin Hernandez (Marion/Ridgedale) is the elder statesman on the men's side. He showed out with a time of 29:31 at the HCAC Championships. A talented group of sophomores will be counted upon heavily when the Beavers toe the line in 2020. Britton Boyle (Middletown) and Max Chandler (Liberty Township/Lakota East) had fantastic freshman campaigns, consistently finishing in the top four for Bluffton. The Beavers will add seven incoming freshmen to the men's squad this fall, giving both the men and women 10 harriers for 2020!

Bluffton opens its 2020 slate on Saturday, Sept. 5, when then it hosts the first of three meets at the Nature Preserve this fall. The Heartland Conference championships will be hosted by Transylvania on Saturday, Oct. 31.

-BEAVERS-