Unfavorable weather and course conditions did not stop the men’s cross country team from achieving strong individual and team success Saturday.

Senior Riak Mabil placed second with a time of 25 minutes, 41 seconds, leading CMU to a third-place finish behind Eastern Michigan and winner Kent State at the Mid-American Conference cross country championships in Athens, Ohio.

“Riak went out from the gun and he went out to win,” said cross country director Willie Randolph. “He raced his best and, considering his Achilles injury, you couldn’t ask for more than what you got.”

Junior Sammy Kiprotich earned first-team All-MAC honors for the second consecutive year, finishing seventh with a time of 26:07.

The Chippewas scored 95 points and had an average time of 26:18, even beating Eastern Michigan in the team score by one tenth of a second, 2:11:34.2 to EMU’s 2:11:34.3.

“Considering the conditions, these are not at all the results we were looking for,” Randolph said. “We went in there believing we could run … we could have, but we happened to run into depth issues.”

Another positive from the conference championship for CMU was sophomore Matt Lutzke (26:20) who, after battling nagging injuries all season, earned second-team all-conference honors with an 11th-place overall finish.

“I was pretty happy with my individual race,” Lutzke said. “I pretty much put it all out on the course today.”

Lutzke competed in two events before this weekend, including a 65th-place finish (27:00) at the Spartan Invitational on Sept. 18 and 198th (26:21) at Pre-Nationals on Oct. 17.

Depth

Senior Jacob Korir (16th, 26:35) and junior Chris Pankow (23rd, 26:49) rounded out the scoring for CMU.

While not counting toward team points, junior Adam Smith (25th, 26:52) and freshman Tecumseh Adams (30th, 27:04) also finished in the top 30.

The Chippewas will prepare for the NCAA Great Lakes Regional Championships on Nov. 14 in Bloomington, Ind.

E-mail the author: Aaron McMann