Titans Open Season With Third-Place Finish

John Dewitt (Sr. • Oshkosh), Kenny Halloran (So. • Mount Prospect, Ill.) and Derek Johnsrud (Jr. • Fall River) placed in the top 14 as UW-Oshkosh finshed third at the Midwest Men's Cross Country Open on Saturday (Sept. 8) in Somers.

Host UW-Parkside won the 12-team meet with 30 points. Michigan Tech came in second with 54 points, while the Titans totaled 93 for third, UW-Milwaukee 96 for fourth and Bellarmine University (Ky.) 131 for fifth. The meet kicked off the 2012 season for UW-Oshkosh.

Rounding out the top 10 teams were sixth-place St. Joseph College (Ind.) with 183 points, seventh-place Illinois Tech with 228, eighth-place Muskegon Community College (Mich.) with 251, ninth-place Milwaukee School of Engineering with 256 and 10th-place Roosevelt University (Ill.) with 269.

UW-Oshkosh's top three runners finished within five seconds of each other. Dewitt finished 11th with his 8,000-meter time of 26:52, while Halloran took 13th at 26:56 and Johnsrud 14th at 26:57.

Other runners contributing to UW-Oshkosh's team score were Matt Champan (Jr. • Waukesha) and Mike Foust (Jr. • Oshkosh). Champan placed 29th with a time of 27:26 and Foust 30th in 27:27.

UW-Oshkosh also had Ryne Scopp (So. • Kenosha) finish 40th in 27:45, Matt Lawrence (So. • Plainfield, Ill.) 51st in 28:01, Jacob Clarke (Fr. • Racine) 57th in 28:07, Zach Adams (Sr. • Lake Geneva) 62nd in 28:11 and Wilson Tobe (So. • Middleton) 65th in 28:13. A total of 122 men completed the course.

UW-Milwaukee's Jake Reilly had a time of 25:51 to win the individual title by 30 seconds. UW-Parkside owned the next finishers as Jesus Escareno placed second in 26:21, Ron Hedman third in 26:27 and Cody Kurscheidt fourth in 26:28. Michigan Tech's Eric Parsell marked a fifth-place time of 26:38 among the meet's 122 runners.

The Titans compete at UW-Whitewater's Warhawk Invitational on Saturday (Sept. 15).