Season in Review

The Wittenberg men’s and women’s cross country teams finished ninth and eighth in the 2004 NCAC Championship meet respectively.

November 30, 2004

Mike Echols

The Wittenberg men’s and women’s cross country teams finished ninth and eighth in the 2004 NCAC Championship meet respectively.

Youth Movement:

The men’s and women’s cross country teams were extremely young in 2004, but Head Coach Steve Shutt believes he has a core group of runners who are committed to the team and intent on improving their times in the future. That bodes well for 2005 and beyond.

On the men’s side, Echols paced the team in every meet in 2004. In most meets, he was trailed by freshmen in three of the next four scoring positions, with only junior Chris Petrik (Mayfield Heights, Ohio/Highland Heights) breaking up a string of college rookies in most meets.

Echols’ top time this season of 27:33 was turned in at the NCAA Great Lakes Regional meet on Nov. 13, a positive sign that he peaked at the right time. The team’s top three finishers in that race all had season-best times as Petrik posted a mark of 27:53 and freshman Shawn Hils (Hiram, Ohio/Crestwood) crossed the finish line in 28:22. Five runners on the team broke the 30-minute barrier in a race during the season.

On the women’s side, the team’s top two finishers in most of the regular season events were freshmen Alissa Goble (Sunfield, Mich./Lakewood) and Mary Beth Lintz (Englewood, Ohio/Northmont). Goble topped the squad in the first meet of the year and Lintz set the pace in all subsequent events until the NCAA Division III Great Lakes Regional meet. There, sophomore Sarah Yehle (West Lafayette, Ind./West Lafayette) topped the Tigers with a time of 25:29.6 on the 6,000-meter course at Alma College.

Six of the seven women runners to hit the course in the regional meet finished the race with season-best times. Yehle’s time was the best for any Wittenberg runner in the 2005 season, while Lintz posted her best mark of 25:45 at the Ohio Northern Invitational. The top five runners on the team all ran sub-27:00 times during the season, four of which came at the regional championships.

The Coach:

Steve Shutt (Allegheny '94) took over the coaching reins of the Wittenberg University men’s and women’s cross country and track & field teams in 1999.

Under Shutt, Wittenberg’s track & field teams have set dozens of school records. Wittenberg track and field athletes have claimed 69 indoor individual NCAC titles, 112 outdoor individual NCAC titles and two individual cross country conference crowns. In addition, eight track athletes and one cross country runner have been NCAA Division III national qualifiers and three track athletes have earned All-America honors (earning a total of seven awards) in Shutt’s six years at the helm.

Skip Ivery won the 2003 outdoor 110-meter hurdles national title and Ivery and Tim Gaal both turned in national runners-up finishes during their collegiate careers. Shutt also led the Tigers to a ninth-place finish in the 2003 outdoor national championships, Wittenberg’s best team finish ever in track and field. Fifteen student-athletes have made the Coaches Association Academic All-America teams in the last six years and a total of 10 NCAC Athlete of the Year honors have been claimed in indoor or outdoor track and field during Shutt’s tenure.

Shutt, the 2002 NCAC Outdoor Track and Field Coach of the Year, was a four-year letterwinner for the Allegheny indoor and outdoor track and field squads, earning all-conference honors in the pole vault. He came to Wittenberg after serving as the assistant coach at Hillsdale College, where he also served as director of the intramural program. While at Hillsdale, Shutt coached several national qualifiers and an All-American.