Saint Mary’s entered the 2024 cross country season with a void to fill, both on and off the course, following the graduation of a highly accomplished senior class.
“We lost some pretty significant leaders, both from a leadership perspective and from a scoring perspective,” head coach Jackie Bauters said after the season. “[We're] continuing the growth of [the] young team that we have and trying to stay competitive with where we had been in the conference.”
Following a regular season full of steady development and improvement from a young team, the Belles proved successful at the MIAA Championships in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They returned home with a top-five finish for the second year and saw eight season-best performances from their runners.
For Bauters, those times were a natural output of the hard work that had been put in throughout the fall as many Belles were challenged to take on greater roles for the team.
“Some of the goals were not even performance goals, but like, ‘okay, how do we bridge that gap and fill in those holes?’” Bauters said. “How can we continue to get better as a squad?”
The driving force behind Saint Mary’s success was its strong sophomore class. A trio of sophomores — Jordan Siminski, Cecilia Conrad and Savannah Paulson — had been among the Belles’ five scoring runners in the postseason as freshmen in 2023. Now they continue to lead the way in their second year on campus. Siminski was up front for Saint Mary’s at both the MIAA Championships and the NCAA Great Lakes Regional, finishing 32nd in the conference, while Conrad and Paulson were scorers for the Belles throughout the postseason.
“Our sophomore class is deep in talent and hard work,” Bauters said. “They’re just kind of like the core of our team at this point, not just because there’s so many of them but because of all the things they bring.”
That talented core was supplemented by a strong roster from top to bottom, and the Belles once again benefited from key contributions made by newcomers. Bauters highlighted freshman Allie Glendening, who came through in third for Saint Mary’s with a 41st place finish at the conference meet, as an up-and-coming talent for the program.
“I think having this team to challenge and push her and bring out her best has really developed her a lot in the last eight months. I feel like she is so much stronger and she’s going to be a much more constant presence near the front next year,” Bauters said about Glendening. “She’s just like the toughest kid ever … She’s a worker and she’s really fun to coach.”
Young teams often lean heavily on the presence of their seasoned veterans, and the Belles’ captains — graduate student Sarah Harman, senior Susanna Bernovich and junior Isabelle Auch — were vital in setting the tone and establishing the culture for the underclassmen. Bernovich was among Saint Mary’s top three finishers at the conference and regional meets.
Following the fifth-place conference finish, the Belles concluded their season by placing 25th against a strong field at the Great Lakes Regional.
With six of its top seven runners at regionals set to return and a strong incoming freshman class joining the mix, the future looks bright for Saint Mary’s, and the Belles will push to reach even greater heights next fall.
“We have a really promising incoming group, which is exciting,” Bauters said. “[They] should be great additions to the program.”
