After winning the Missouri-Illinois Border Wars, the Missouri Southern women’s cross country team looks to extend its winning streak tomorrow’s at the MIAA conference meet.

Junior Kimi Shank won the meet individually. Shank finished the 5k race with a time of 18:01.

Senior Kara Eckard finished fourth, followed by junior Courtney Waltbillig who finished 21st.

Sophomore Victoria Kline, senior Kari Fritchie, and sophomores Olga Bulgurova and Silvia Pineda finished 22nd, 29th, 35th and 44th respectively.

The women placed in front of Pittsburg State by 18 points, and an average of 13 seconds per runner.

The men’s team was led by freshman Chris Bell. Bell earned a 24th place finish with a time of 27:01.

“Chris is coming along, hopefully we get him far enough,” said men’s Head Coach Tom Rutledge. “He’s going to be really good runner someday.”

Freshman Derek Mendell finished the 8k course in 47th place, followed by junior Brennan Benkert. Benkert finished in 49th.

“We held Brennan back,” Rutledge said. “We wanted to see how the freshmen would respond. There are no egos on this team. We work as a team.

“We’re going to have to fill some voids. The freshmen have to grow up.”

Freshmen Shawn Goebel and Deric Kimery finished 62nd, and 98th respectively.

“Other teams keep looking at us like we are having a down season,” Rutledge said. “But we are reloading, not rebuilding. We will adapt and adjust.”

The men’s team will run not return senior Dustin Dixon or junior Isaac Garcia, both of which are All-Americans.

“We’ve basically redshirted Dustin,” Rutledge said. “He was our number one man. It’s going to hurt us, but I am confident that we can win. The runners just need to believe they can do it. We’ll find a way to win. That’s what we’ve always done”

Southern, will run Benkert and freshmen Aki Nummela and Jarrko Jarvenpaa.

“Jarkko is excited,” Rutledge said. “He’s gaining confidence. Aki’s doing great as well. Brennan’s just always been there.”

Both teams are looking to defend their MIAA titles, against schools such as Pittsburg State, Truman and Southwest Baptist.

“We have targets on our backs,” Rutledge said. “It’s not going to be easy for us, or other teams.”

Tomorrow’s meet will be hosted by the University of Central Missouri, in Warrensburg.

“We just need to run like we’re trained,” Rutledge said. “Hard.”