The Gulf Coast Athletic Conference cross country championship on Oct. 20 unfolded like a three-ring circus.

Loyola star Mary Erin Imwalle, the defending conference champion, quit two days before the race. Her replacement, volleyball player Keelyn Henderson, ran her first official race ever and placed first among Loyola women. Then the meet was delayed after several runners lost their way on an inadequately marked track.

Therefore, the coaches unanimously decided to dismiss the results of the race. The conference will determine this year’s champions by their placement at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Region XIII meet, scheduled for Nov. 3.

The first sign of trouble came during the women’s 5-kilometer race when several runners, including general business freshman Laura Hall, struggled to find the path.

Hall said there weren’t enough mile-markers, and she had to rely on fellow Loyola runners to reach the finish line.

“This isn’t fair,” Hall said. “I think they should have done the meet much, much better. It’s probable that I ran more than I needed to. And it’s probable that I ran less than I needed to. I don’t even know. I may as well not have come.”

Runners faced similar problems during the men’s race, which was scheduled an hour after the women’s and was on the same part of the track. It became clear the course had been marked incorrectly after several runners finished in under 27 minutes, an unusually short time for the distance. University of Xavier cross country officials failed to make adjustments for the men’s race and gave sparse instructions beforehand, participants said.

For Zach Custer, English writing senior and Maroon columnist, the mishap was inexcusable. He was dealing with iliotibial band syndrome, a knee injury, and was planning to sit the meet out.

But when Tyler Kaufman, marketing sophomore and Maroon photo editor, broke his right wrist as he was executing plyometrics (box jumps) during a workout on Oct. 18, Custer decided to run to fulfill the five-runner requirement.

Custer said his leg was so sore during the race that at one point he had “to lock one leg and run with the other.” He now has to contend with healing his leg in time for the Regional championship next week.

“I thought it was going to give out,” he said.

To comply with the five-runner rule, Wolfpack volleyball players Kristie Hadley, sociology freshman, and Keelyn Henderson, international business junior, ran for the women’s team.

“We’re on loan. Just trying to help out the athletic program,” Henderson said. “Even though they’re different sports, it’s really one program.”

Henderson finished first among Loyola women’s runners in her first official race ever.

“You don’t have to be a runner. You have to be a competitor. You just have to know you can win it. It really is all mental,” she said.

Her time and place, however, wasn’t released because of the track mistake.

“It’s very difficult to put on a meet,” head coach Al Seither said. “But I’m very disappointed. At least we as coaches came to a compromise.”

The meet was an aching finish to a long week for Seither, who not only lost Kaufman to injury, perhaps for the season, but also last year’s GCAC conference championship winner Mary Erin Imwalle, mass communication senior, who quit Thursday afternoon.

Imwalle told The Maroon that she “just didn’t get along with the athletic department.” The last straw, she said, was when the athletic department suspended for her competing in the Louisiana State University Invitational Meet even though Seither had withdrawn the squad from the competition because of a tropical depression in the Gulf of Mexico.

Chad Bower can be reached at [email protected].