Missouri Southern’s women’s cross country team took a trip to Chicago Oct. 1.

They came back with a fifth place finish in the women’s maroon division at the Sean Earl Loyola Lakefront Invitational.

Senior Erin Click led the way with a 19th-place finish and a time of 19:22. Sophomore Kelly O’Toole finished 22nd in 19:27. Junior Kelly Fanning finished in 19:54 for 44th.

Freshman Kara Eckard finished in 19:57 for 46th. Krista Merrill, freshman, finished 50th with 20:04 and Alison Walker, freshman, finished in 20:10 for 54th.

Patty Vavra, head women’s cross country coach, said there were 310 athletes and 27 different teams competing in the event, while there were 4,000 athletes there that day for competition.

“We didn’t quite meet our expectations going into it, but we’re having hard workouts and there are three weeks until conference,” Click said. “If we keep training hard and improving, we should meet our expectations by then. We’re still comparable to others in the conference.”

Individually, Vavra said O’Toole continues to improve every week. O’Toole bettered her time in Chicago last year by more than 40 seconds.

“She’s really taking a nice step forward and taking on leadership as one of our top runners on this year’s team as a sophomore,” Vavra said.

Vavra said the course was a great setting with a lake on each side. She also said it was flat with one big hill in the middle the athletes had to run up three times.

She said they went to Chicago to compete against a different group of teams.

“We went to run against different teams than what we see week-in and week-out, which will be a stark comparison compared to the meet this week.”

She also said another plus for the meet in Chicago was the women’s chance to bond as a team.

Vavra said she also looks at collegiate athletics as educational, and it was the first time some members of the team had been to Chicago.

“It was a lot of fun to visit Chicago,” Eckard said. “It was a nice bonding experience to get to know each other more.”

She said the team works hard and works together.

The goals for this week are to get the pack out to the front, improve times and have better performances.

The women will run Saturday at the Missouri-Illinois Border War in Edwardsville, Ill before heading to Pittsburg State University for the conference championships Oct. 22.

O’Toole said there will be a lot of the schools from the conference at the Border War, and the Lions want to see how they measure up.

“It’s getting down to the nitty gritty,” Vavra said. “It’s the last meet before the conference championships.”

Eckard said she is looking forward to everyone having a good race at the same time so they can do well as a team.

“We just feel like this team has a lot more potential than we’ve seen in an actual meet setting,” Vavra said. “They just haven’t all come together on meet day to have a great race. I really hope we’ll see it this week.”