University of Minnesota Athletics
24th Griak Invitational Set for Saturday, Sept. 26
9/25/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
24th Annual Roy Griak Invitational
Saturday, Sept. 26Falcon Heights, Minn.Les Bolstad Golf Course
9 a.m. Women’s Maroon III Race
9:45 a.m. Women’s Maroon II Race
10:30 a.m. Men’s Maroon III Race
11:20 a.m. Men’s Maroon II Race
12:10 p.m. Men’s Gold Race
12:55 p.m. Jack Johnson Women’s Gold Race
1:25 p.m. Goldy’s Kids Run
1:40 p.m. Larry Zirgibel Boys’ Gold HS Race
2:25 p.m. Girls’ Gold High School Race
3:10 p.m. Boys’ Maroon High School Race
Golden Gopher Watch List — Sept. 23, 2009
• Minnesota Hosts 24th Annual Roy Griak Invitational - The Minnesota men’s and women’s cross country teams will host the 24th Annual Roy Griak Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the University of Minnesota Les Bolstad Golf Course in Falcon Heights, Minn. The meet is one of the largest in the nation each year.
• Gopher Women Are Defending Champs - The Golden Gopher women are the two-time defending champions of the Griak Invitational Jack Johnson Gold Race. Minnesota captured the 2008 title with an impressive team score of 31 points behind Megan Duwell’s runner-up finish.
• Gopher All-American Mead Makes Season Debut - Gopher junior All-American Hassan Mead will make his 2009 season debut at the Griak. Mead finished second in the Griak in 2008, the highest individual finish ever for the Gopher men’s program.
• Gophers are Nationally Ranked - The Minnesota women’s and men’s teams were ranked No. 8 and No. 17, respectively, in the preseason USTFCCCA national poll.
• Want Even More Information? - Check out Minnesota’s website gophersports.com for further information on the Griak Invitational, including a list of competing teams, course maps, admission prices and parking instructions.
Minnesota Hosts 24th Annual Griak Invitational
The Minnesota men’s and women’s cross country teams will play host to the 24th Annual Roy Griak Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 26, at the University of Minnesota Les Bolstad Golf Course in Falcon Heights, Minn. The Griak annually is one of the largest cross country meets in the nation.
Roy Griak - A Minnesota Legend
The Roy Griak Invitational is named after a living legend, former Golden Gopher cross country and track coach Roy Griak. Griak has spent the last 46 years with the Minnesota Athletics Department, 33 of those coaching. Since his retirement from the coaching ranks in 1996, Griak has served as the administrative assistant for the men’s cross country and track programs. Griak, who has attended 22 of the 23 Invitationals, will celebrate his 86th birthday on Oct. 5.
Details, Details: Admission, Parking, Etc.
Ticket prices for the 2009 Griak are $5 for adults and $2 for students. Children under 6 years of age are free. No pets will be allowed on the course. Spectator parking is available on the St. Paul Campus, a short walk away from the course.
And the Winner Is...
Team and individual results of the 2009 Griak Invitational will be placed on the Golden Gophers’ website gophersports.com as quickly as possible following the completion of each race.
Fulkrod, Timm Are Honorary Referees in 2009
The Roy Griak Invitational will have two honorary referees oversee race day. The 2009 Honorary Griak Invitational Collegiate Referee is long-time Minnesota-Duluth head coach John Fulkrod. During his 19-year tenure as the men’s head coach, the Bulldogs won 11 consecutive Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference titles from 1993-03. Fulkrod has served as the UMD head women’s coach for 17 seasons, 10 of them ending with Northern Sun titles.
The 2009 Honorary Griak Invitational High School Referee is Don Timm, a Golden Gopher alum and a 36-year veteran head at Coon Rapids High School. Timm ran for Coach Roy Griak from 1967-71. He was a two-time Big Ten runner-up and helped Minnesota to the 1969 Big Ten team title and a seventh-place showing in the NCAA Championships.
Griak History
The meet was first contested in 1986 and was named the Minnesota Invitational from 1986-94 and the Norstand Invitational in 1995-96, until it was renamed the Roy Griak Invitational in 1997. The meet has grown from 220 finishers in 1986 to a record 3,505 competitors in 2007. The 2008 event featured 345 teams and 3,433 competitors.
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40,000th Griak Finisher to Cross Line
Over the last 23 years, 36,820 runners have completed the Griak course, meaning that an athlete likely in the High School Girls Maroon Race have the distinction of being the 40,000th finisher in Griak history. Entering the 2009 event, 3,838 teams have competed.
Interstate 35 Battle Highlights Gold Races
The men’s and women’s Griak Gold Races feature the common element of an ensuing battle of nationally ranked teams Minnesota and Iowa State. Iowa State, located in Ames, Iowa, is Minnesota’s closest NCAA Division I opponent, separated by 3 1/2-hour stretch of Interstate 35. In the men’s race, the Gophers are ranked No. 17, while the Cyclones are tabbed No. 25. Minnesota’s women are ranked No. 8, while Iowa State is No. 28.
Returning Champs, Gopher Women Seek Three-Peat
Minnesota is the two-time defending champion in the Jack Johnson Women’s Gold Race. A new individual champion will be crowned. Arizona State’s Kari Hardt won the individual title a year ago.
The Men’s Gold Race will crown both a new team and individual champion. The 2008 Griak champion, Adams State, is not entered in the 2009 field. The men’s medalist was Auburn’s Elkanah Kibet.
The Golden Gophers
Minnesota is poised for both its men’s and women’s teams to contend for top Griak finishes. Both the Golden Gopher squads are the high ranked teams in their respective Griak fields - the women at No. 8 and the men at No. 17.
The Gopher women will be tested by powerful squads from BIg Ten rival Michigan State (ranked No. 17) and Iowa State (ranked No. 28). Minnesota scored just 31 points in winning the 2008 title, and hopes to once again use tightly packed depth to push the Maroon and Gold to the front of the pack. The Gophers are led by All-Americans Megan Duwell and Jamie Cheever and a host of all-region runners in Amy Laskowske, Heather Dorniden, Mallory Van Ness and Elizabeth Yetzer.
The Gopher men are chasing their first Griak title and should receive their biggest competition from Iowa State. Minnesota is paced by All-American Hassan Mead, who will make his 2009 season debut on Saturday. Mead is also expected to contend for the individual Griak title, after finishing second last season and sixth 2007. The Gophers’ top-seven is a work in progress. Ben Blankenship, Matt Barrett and Mike McFarland all earned all-region honors last season and join Mead as a solid corps of experience in the lineup.
Griak Runners-Up Chase the Top Spots in 2009
A pair of Golden Gopher All-Americans - Hassan Mead and Megan Duwell, ran to second-place finishes at the Griak Invitational a year ago. Both are among the favorites to contend for medalist honors this time around. Mead is running his first race of the season, while Duwell already has one title this season, winning the Oz Memorial Run two weeks ago.
Mead’s runner-up showing in 2008, is the highest placing by a Gopher men’s runner. The only Golden Gopher to win the individual title was Rasa Michniovaite in 1998.
Griak High School Champs Running for the Gophers
A number of the native Minnesotans on the Golden Gopher rosters competed at the Griak during their high school careers. The 2006 Griak Boys Gold champion Hassan Mead will compete for the Minnesota men on Saturday and is among a list of three former Griak high school champs (Forrest Tahdooahnippah, 2002; and Mike Torchia, 2005) to run for the Gophers.
Elizabeth Yetzer, a 2005 Griak Girls’ Gold champion and now a senior, and freshman Kayla Wagner, the 2008 Griak Girls’ Maroon champion, are the fourth and fifth Griak high school champion to later run for the Gopher women (Anna Gullingsrud, Victoria Moses and Stefanie Zeihan).
Gopher Alum Brings Her Team to the Griak
There have been several Golden Gopher alumni in the coaching ranks who have brought their teams to compete in the Griak Invitational. It doesn’t happen often in the collegiate Gold Races, however. In 2009, former Gopher Andrea Grove-McDonogh will bring the Connecticut women to the Griak. Grove-McDonogh earned three varsity letters running cross country for the Gophers (1992-94).
Griak Notes of Interest
• The 2009 Griak features returning individual champions in two of the four Maroon collegiate races. Bethel’s Dan Greeno is the defending champ in the Men’s Maroon III Race, while Minnesota-Duluth’s Morgan Place seeks a repeat in the Women’s Maroon II Race.
• Just how good can a Griak field be? Last year, Bethel’s Marie Borner placed second in the Griak Maroon III Race but later won the NCAA Division III national title.
• Only three runners have been able to win the Griak Men’s Gold Race title twice. Providence’s Ben Noad won back-to-back Griak titles in 1997 and 1998 while BYU’s Kip Kangogo won in 2002 and 2003. Wisconsin’s Matt Tegenkamp won the title in 2001 and again in 2004.
• The Griak Women’s Gold Race has also had only two repeat champions, Fran Ten Bensel (Nebraska) in 1991 and 1992, and Kim Smith (Providence) in 2003 and 2004.
• Wisconsin-Platteville’s Tyler Sigl is the first and only three-time Griak champion. Sigl won the 2005 and 2006 Griak titles in the Men’s Maroon Race, which were contested with scholarship and non-scholarship entries at the time. He won this third title in the Maroon III Race in 2007, the first year the maroon field was split into II and III.
• Other two-time Griak champions are Vladimir Golias (Central Missouri State) - Men’s Maroon in 1997 and 1998; Sarah Anderson (Wisconsin-Superior) - Women’s Maroon in 1997 and 1998 and Jonah Kiptarus. Kiptarus won the 1994 Men’s Maroon title as a member of the Barton County squad, then returned as a Nebraska runner to win the 1996 Men’s Gold crown.
• Minnesota has four Griak titles to its credit, all on the women’s side, with wins in 1988, 2000, 2007 and 2008. The best finish for the Minnesota men was second in 2006.
• The only Golden Gopher to win the individual title was Rasa Michniovaite in 1998. The highest finishes from the Golden Gopher men’s team were a runner-up finish by Hassan Mead in 2008 and a third-place showing by Chris Rombough in 2007.
• Brigham Young’s Kip Kangogo set the Griak record over an 8-kilometer course, winning in a time of 23:38.9 in 2002.
• The Women’s Gold Race was lengthened from 5K to 6K in 2000. The 2004 champion, Providence’s Kim Smith set the 6K record with a time of 20:10.
• Wisconsin leads the way with 11 Griak men’s titles. The women’s event has had 12 different teams win in the Griak’s 22-year history with Arizona State and Providence each with four team titles leading the way.
• Wisconsin is the only school to win the men’s and women’s Griak titles in the same year, doing so in 1997.
• Of the 31 men’s teams that competed in the NCAA Championships in 2008, four of them ran in the Griak Invitational. Three (3) women’s teams that competed in the Griak also advanced to the 31-team 2008 NCAA Championships.
• Roy Griak has missed only one Griak Invitational in its 24-year history. In 2000, Griak missed the meet to attend a once-in-a-lifetime reunion of World War II Army veterans. Griak will be an award presenter at the meet again this year.
• Minnesota women’s head coach Gary Wilson in is his 25th year with the Golden Gophers. But several coaches bringing teams from the state of Wisconsin have ties to Wilson from his successful coaching stint at Wisconsin-LaCrosse prior to coming to Minnesota. Wisconsin-LaCrosse’s men’s coach Don Fritsch, Wisconsin-Platteville’s Tom Antczak and Wisconsin-Whitewater coach Jeff Miller are former athletes of Wilson’s at LaCrosse.
• Four teams have used Griak Gold Race titles to help propel them to NCAA Division I team championships: the Wisconsin men in 1988, the Iowa State men in 1989, the Villanova women in 1989 and the Providence women in 1995. Wisconsin was the 2005 Griak runner-up, then went on to win the NCAA title.
• Six individuals won Griak titles in seasons in which they won the NCAA crown: Villanova’s Vicki Huber in 1989, Iowa State’s John Nuttall in 1989, Wisconsin’s Kathy Butler in 1995, Providence’s Keith Kelly in 2000, Providence’s Kim Smith in 2004 and Wisconsin’s Simon Bairu in 2005.
• The most athletes to compete in any single Griak race was in 2007, when 563 athletes competed in the Women’s Maroon III Race. The Men’s Maroon Race was split into Maroon II and Maroon III in 2007 after 500 runners competed in 2006.
• Iowa State won the Men’s Gold title in 1989 with 15 points, the only perfect team score in Griak history.
• Griak individual titles have been decided by just one second a total of 10 times in the past 21 years. The most recent occurrence in the Gold Races was in 2006 when Stephanie Rothstein (UC Santa Barbara) edged teammate Lauren Chrstman for the Women’s Gold title. The duo actually recorded the exact time: 21:13. Minnesota’s only Griak medalist, Rasa Michniovaite, also won her race by just a second in 1998.
• The two high school races were added to the Griak Invitational in 1994 and split into Gold and Maroon Races in 2004.
Griak Champions — Women
Arizona State 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005
UC Santa Barbara 2006
Nebraska 1986
Iowa 1987
Minnesota 1988, 2000, 2007, 2008
Michigan State 2002
North Carolina State 1993
Oregon 1989, 1994
Providence 1995, 1996, 1998, 2004
Villanova 1989
Virginia 1991
Wisconsin 1992, 1997
Griak Champions — Men
Adams State 1992, 2008
Arizona 2006
Brigham Young 2005
Iowa State 1989, 1990, 1993
Northern Arizona 2007
Oregon 2002
Providence 1998, 2000
South Florida 1991
Wisconsin 1986, 1987, 1988, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004
The men's Gold Field:
Air Force, Army, Dayton, Drake, Duke, High Point, Iowa State, Lipscomb, Michigan State, Minnesota, Missouri, Navy, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Utah Valley and Washington State.
The women's Gold Field:
Air Force, Alabama-Birmingham, Army, Connecticut, Drake, High Point, Iowa State, Lipscomb, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Northwestern, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Dakota State, Utah Valley and Washington State.
Players Mentioned
