EVANSVILLE, Ind.—University of Southern Indiana senior Jennifer Comastri (Indianapolis, Indiana) and junior Noah Hufnagel (Santa Claus, Indiana) have respectively been named the Great Lakes Valley Conference Women’s and Men’s Cross Country Runners of the Week in an announcement by the league office Tuesday afternoon.
Comastri earns her first GLVC Runner of the Week honor of the 2021 season and second of her career after finishing second out of 292 competitors at the University of Alabama-Huntsville Chargers Invitational this past Saturday.
She finished the five-kilometer course in 17 minutes, 5.71 seconds, leading the No. 15-ranked Screaming Eagles to a second-place team finish in the 33-team field.
Comastri, who is working on her graduate degree in leadership (health services), is the second USI women’s runner to earn GLVC Runner of the Week accolades after freshman Katie Winkler (Santa Claus, Indiana) earned the honor last month.
Hufnagel, a kinesiology major at USI, is earning his second GLVC Runner of the Week honor of the year after finishing eighth out of 340 competitors at the UAH Chargers Invitational. He crossed the finish line with an 8k time of 24:07.45, leading the No. 10-ranked Eagles to a fourth-place finish in the 33-team field.
The Eagles return to action October 23 when they compete at the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championships. USI’s men are looking to recapture the GLVC title after failing to win the conference championship for the first time in 16 years in 2020, while the women are looking to recapture the GLVC title for the first time since 2019 and the 11th time since 2008.
