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Contact: Drew Sauer, Assistant Sports Information Director, 630-637-5324

HANOVER, Ind. (Nov. 23, 2013) – The North Central College men's cross country team's bid at a third-consecutive NCAA Division III National Championship ended with a runner-up finish Saturday at the L.S. Ayres Complex, coming up just two points shy of the team title while John Crain finished his career with an individual runner-up showing.
 
The Cardinals tallied 86 total team points in the standings, as St. Olaf College (Minn.) narrowly claimed the team championship, finishing the afternoon with 84 total points.  The University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse finished third with 155 points, while Washington University (Mo.) and Williams College (Mass.) rounded out the top-five with 167 and 218 points, respectively.
 
North Central sat in second place with just over 1,000-meters remaining, but the Cardinals last minute surge was not enough to overcome St. Olaf.
 
"You can always look at two points here or there," said Head Coach Al Carius, "but I think we ran the course the way we set out to.  We got through the first pass pretty well and our positioning was good, it's just that St. Olaf had a little better position later in the meet.  I thought we came on very strong at the end, but it just wasn't enough to make up those two points."
 
The Cardinals 86 total team points is the lowest a North Central team has scored at the national meet since the 2009 team set the national record for margin of victory with 50 points, but with a stronger field this season the cards did not fall in North Central's favor.
 
"We scored 167 points last season to 86 this season," said Carius, "so we had great improvement.  That's really the measure of success and how we define it.  I'm very proud of the team, we had a great amount of growth from last season.  We had two great teams going head-to-head all afternoon, and St. Olaf was the better team here today."
 
Senior John Crain was at the front of the pack from the start, but ran out of steam over the final 300-meters en route to a runner-up finish in a time of 24 minutes, 33.1 seconds.  Crain earns his second All-America accolade, after finishing in sixth-place last season.
 
Roger Klein was the next Cardinal to cross the tape, as the senior finished in 10^th-place in a time of 25:01.9, earning his first All-America honor.
 
Also finishing in the top-35 and earning All-American accolades were Tim Hird and Troy Kelleher.  Hird finished the course in a time of 25:20.6, good for 33^rd place, while Kelleher finished in 35^th place, crossing the finish line in a time of 25:24.4.  Ryan Root rounded out the scoring for the Cardinals finishing in 48^th place, in a time of 25:32.2.
 
"It wasn't the outcome we were looking for," said Crain, "both as a team and myself individually.  It's tough to go out my senior year and not win as a team, but I'm proud of our guys.  We ran tough, we ran strong, but we just got beat by a better team today.  We layed it all out there today and I just ran out of gas the last 300-meters or so.  As a team we ran well, we scored about half the points we did last year, yet we didn't come out on top.  I think that speaks to how strong the competition was this season."
 
Michael LeDuc of Connecticut College claimed the individual championship, traversing the course in a time of 24:29.3.
 
North Central is the only institution to appear in all 41 NCAA Division III Men's Cross Country National Championships and has finished among the top-four on 37 occasions.
 
The runner-up finish is the 15^th in the history of the program, as the Cardinals have placed in the top-two in each of the last six seasons.