The Buccaneers cross country team traveled to Billings last Friday to compete at the Yellowjacket Invitational.

The men’s 8k race was fast and very competitive. With that, the Buccaneers were pushed to race faster than they have in previous weeks, which led them to meet the qualification standards to head to Nationals as a team in November. Connor Chase had previously qualified individually, but now the entire team (Garet Hoke, Eniah Boseman, Raymond Kirwa, and James Springer) will head to the NJCAA Cross Country DII Nationals Meet in Richmond, VA in November.

The women’s 5k also had a very competitive field of runners. Emberlyn Hoffman-Gashck started out strong and maintained throughout the race to finish in tenth place. All the other runners that finished in the top 10 were from four year schools. Gaschk improved her season’s best by 16.5 seconds, finishing with a time of 19:17.2 in the race on Friday.

Coach Alex Chase Wolff said, “I am so proud of the men’s team. They set this goal back in August to qualify as a team and go to nationals, and they got it done. Now our focus is on the race in Richmond, VA and competing at a high level there. I am also very excited to continue to watch Emberlyn improve over the coming weeks. She raced very well and strong against very competitive teams. She not only finished in the Top 10, but improved her college 5k time as well.”

The cross country team has a meet at the end of October in Riverton, WY at the Central Wyoming College campus scheduled for October 30th. Following that is Nationals, which will take place on November 13th in Richmond, VA at Pole Green Park.