Junior Ryan Turner posted a career-best time at the NCAA Region Meet and helped Concordia move up one spot from their seeded finish.

Posted: Nov 14, 2015

Turner Turns In Career Day At Regions

PELLA, Iowa (11/14/15)— Ryan Turner led the Cobber harriers for the third time this season as he finished in the top 100 at the NCAA Central Region meet.

Turner raced through the 8k course with a lifetime best mark of 28:02 which was good for 98th place.

Turner's career day helped Concordia finish in 25th place out of the 31 teams competing at the meet. The Cobbers were one of only two teams who improved on their seeded place. CC was ranked 26th but had a solid season-ending meet and improved on that projection by one place.

Turner went for broke from the very start as he earned his best region finish ever.

"Ryan scared me a little bit going out that hard, but he kept his pace steady and hung tough," said head coach Garrick Larson. "He's just run great down the stretch and led the team."

The Cobbers exceeded their seed by one position despite losing top runner Brandon Quibell less than halfway into the race.

"'Quibs' (Quibell) had to drop out," said a disappointed Larson. "You hate to see one of your top 5 guys drop mid-race but he's been battling a sporadic hip issue that just flared up today."

The remaining six Concordia athletes rallied despite the loss of Quibell. Race Heitkamp ran a steady paced race and finished as the team's No.2 runner. He clocked a 28:30 and was 125th.

Matthew Lillehaugen had his season's best race to finish 140th in a time of 28:52. His brother Luke Lillehaugen struggled with breathing but carried through to place 177th in just over 30:35. His finishing time of 30:38 was one second faster than junior Will Corbett who picked up the pace knowing he had to be the team's No.5 runner. Peter Simon rounded out the Cobber runners in 187th place at 31:39.

Larson summed up his feelings on the race by stating, "I was disappointed before I saw the results. At first I was coping with the loss of a top 5 runner and what looked like a tough day. It turned out the Cobbers beat a couple of unexpected teams in Minn.-Morris and Northwestern while narrowly losing to Buena Vista by 10 points."

He went on to add, "now that I've had an opportunity to analyze the results, we improved more than all but one MIAC team between the MIAC Championship and NCAA Central Regional. The improvement tells me that our guys have been working very hard and were definitely focused on the competition."

With only one of the top 7 runners graduating in the spring, the Cobbers expect to continue to improve as they make their way through the track and field season and then into training for next fall.