After a trio of Cardinal harriers fell due to wet, sloppy course conditions, the North Central College men's cross country team portrayed the resiliency of a champion at the 2014 NCAA Division III National Championship, fighting back from a nearly insurmountable deficit over the final two kilometers to return to the top of the national podium and bring back its 16th national championship trophy.
 
North Central totaled 130 team points in the team standings  to claim its third national title in four years, edging out runner-up St. Olaf College's (Minnesota) total of 143.  The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse finished third with 188 points, while Washington University (Missouri) and Colby College (Maine) ended with 192 points each.
 
The Cardinals got off to a great start with all seven runners in the front of the pack, but as the snow melted across The Golf Center at King's Island throughout the morning, the course quickly turned from solid ground to a muddy catastrophe and took out Troy Kelleher, Zach Plank and Ben Dickshinski all within the first kilometer.
 
"At that point we could have disintegrated," said head coach Al Carius, "but they just kept fighting back and that's a real tribute to this team.'
 
With what seemed to be an insurmountable lead, eventual runner-up St. Olaf had its top-five runners in front of North Central's top-three after the six-kilometer mark and looked to have its second straight national title all but locked up, but the Cardinals were determined to write a different ending to this historic season.
 
Fully aware of their teammates stumbling early on, Travis Morrison and Aron Sebhat kept pace with the lead pack, knowing their teammates behind them would do everything in their power to climb back into contention.
 
"Before the race we talked about two things, believe in yourself and focus on the team," said Morrison.  "Early on I saw Troy fall and saw Aron on my right side, so we knew it was going to be difficult right from the start.  It's a strong synergy that holds this team together and I knew that once those guys fell they would get back up and give everything they could to climb back." 
 
Morrison was the first Cardinal to cross the finish line, tackling the 8,000-meter course in seventh-place in a time of 24 minutes, 3.37 seconds to earn his first All-America certificate.  Sebhat finished close behind in 12th, crossing the tape in 24:13.75, also earning his first All-America honor. 
 
Plank and Kelleher fought back from the back third of the pack early on to finish in 44^th and 46^th place, respectively, in times of 24:48.65 and 24:50.40, while each sprinting past a St. Olaf runner in the final 200 meters.  Ryan Root rounded out the Cardinal scoring in 58th place with a time of 25:00.07.  Dickshinski finished in 74th in a time of 25:06.68 and Tim Vazquez was the final Cardinal to cross the line in 79th place in 25:09.56.
 
"It's part of our training," said Kelleher, "we train for adversity and everything that could have went wrong did today, but coach Carius always teaches us about competitive response and how you respond to adversity. Our philosophy heading into today was to adapt to the conditions and that led to the results we had today.
 
We came in with the idea that whatever happened we weren't going to give up.  We knew the race would go out really hard and we just trusted our philosophy of resiliency.  We knew every place mattered and win or lose we were going to go after it."