Noel Black finished ninth at the 2025 Jayhawk Invitational, hosted by Muskegon Community College, headlining another quality day for Lake Superior State's men's and women's cross country teams.

The sophomore finished the 5K women's race in 18:34.55 on a day with excellent racing conditions on a fast course. Teammate Izzy Yeoman finished shortly after her, at 18:42.78, and the Lakers finished third in team scoring. Lakers head coach Matt Stith was extremely pleased with the results.

"One of the things we'd spoken to our women about was not being reckless, but being assertive at the beginning of races," he said. "We told them to put themselves in a position that was challenging, but they believed they could hold. Everybody top to bottom did that, but Noel and Izzy executed that tactical move very well."

He continued, "When Noel's going well, we can tell because she's very loose. She'll flash us a thumbs up or a grin halfway through the race and we saw that all the way around the course, so we could tell that she felt really good. Izzy ran her typical kind of race where she got into a solid position to start and then drove hard over the last half of the race, passing folks and picking up places. She was continuing to get stronger and stronger throughout the race."

Lilly Binger finished 26^th at 19:20.65. The first-year runner continues her excellent rookie campaign for LSSU and played a key role in the squad's third place finish.

Stith said, "It shows we executed well. In some cases, the schools that were there were splitting their forces between Muskegon and the big meet in Illinois, so there's some small asterisks, but I'm very happy with how we finished. It shows that we're in a position to have a really strong performance at GLIACs, which is the focus of everything we've been doing."

For LSSU's men's team, Gavin Guggemos finished the 8K race 42^nd at 26:42.62, while Birk Seagren came in 48^th at 26:50.01. The Lakers got quality performances from them, lifting the team to a sixth place finish overall among the 16 at the Jayhawk Invitational.

Stith said, "Gavin ran a very solid, tactical race. His execution was exactly what we would have hoped for, and he feels very good about it as well. He'd felt a little sick recently. Give him another two weeks to get his legs under him and he'll be ready to pop off at GLIACs."

The Lakers pack-ran very well. Derrian Kumfer (69^th) and Jeremiah Witt (70^th) finished at 27:25.88 and 27:27.05 respectively. Kumfer finished third on the team, and there was just a 36 second difference between him and the Lakers' seventh place runner, Noah Hernandez. Less than three seconds separated Hernandez from Nathaniel Kilgore, who finished 91^st at 27:59.90. Of the top seven Lakers, only Kumfer is a junior. All six of the others are in their first or second years of college running. Stith believes the sky is the limit for his team goin forward.

"We are just scratching the surface of what this unit is going to be able to produce and how they'll perform in the years to come," he said. "A lot of these guys are getting their first significant racing experience at the college level. When you take all of that and give us a year or two of training and a couple of track seasons… without any doubt in my mind, we are on the rise. We're going to see great things this year, but it's only the beginning of what we're going to see over the next couple of years."

The Lakers travel to Houghton for Friday's Husky Invitational, the final race before the October 25^th's GLIAC Championships. True to form, as happy as the Laker coach is with the times and places, he's far more focused on the work put in.

"We saw everything that we've asked them to work on displayed on the course. As always, it's the work and the progress we're making that's more exciting to us than the times and places, because the times come naturally when we're putting in the work that we're supposed to."