Haro did not know until shortly before the race began whether she would be able to run. Although it is not expected to keep her out of the conference meet, the injury was severe enough to keep her from running on Saturday.

“She’s a senior captain that’s a great leader, and that was another reason that it was important that we did well even without her,” head coach Dave Uhrich said.

Sophomore Jodi Jakubek was Marquette’s best finisher, taking 13th overall with a time of 20:45. Freshman Heidi Lindeman took second on the team and 55th overall with a time of 21:38, and senior Brianna Dahm took third on the team and 58th overall with a time of 21:41.

“Jodi ran amazing,” Uhrich said. “That was definitely a race that showed she has the ability to be an All-American this year.”

Uhrich singled out senior Audrey Schiltz, who finished fourth for Marquette and 64th overall with a time of 21:48, as running what he called “the best race of her life.”

“That was important, to have another senior come along and run so well,” Uhrich said. “She’s always been a big-meet performer, and I think she felt like she needed to step it up once we knew Jamie couldn’t run.”

Dahm was impressed with her teammates’ performances.

“I think we wanted to place a little bit higher,” she said, “but Jodi and Audrey just had exceptional races. They ran amazing. I think the rest of us ran well but we can still run better than what we did.”

Because the meet was so large, the competition was split into two races. Marquette ran in the Gold Race with teams such as Missouri (then ranked No. 21) and Wisconsin (then-No. 17), as well as then-No. 2 Stanford.

Going into the meet, the Golden Eagles were ranked 26th in the nation. After the dust had settled, they had beaten then-No.13 Villanova and held off No. 27 West Virginia. When the new weekly rankings were announced Monday, Marquette’s women were ranked 21st in the country, their highest ranking of this season.

Because they will likely have to reach the national championships via an at-large bid (which are decided in part by how many teams ranked in front of them that they have beaten during the regular season), and because this will be their last meet before the Conference USA championships on Nov. 1, it was important that the women at least hold their ground at this meet.

According to Uhrich, they accomplished that goal.

“The thing I was most pleased about,” Uhrich said, “is I know we can still run quite a bit better than that. Even though it wasn’t a perfect race, we were still able to beat a lot of nationally ranked teams, and that helps give us a much better chance to get to nationals.”

On the men’s side, things were slightly more disappointing, as they finished 31st out of the 35 teams running the Purple race.

“These meets are tough, and when you’re not a nationally ranked team, you’re going against the best in the country, and so if you have a little bit of an off day, it’s easy to finish pretty far down, even though you’re not running that badly,” Uhrich said. “Any one of the teams in front of us, I’m not disappointed by getting beat by. But had we run a little better, we could have moved up quite a few places.”

The men were led by sophomore Brent Des Roches, who finished 121st overall with a time of 25:05, along with sophomore David Henderson’s 145th place finishing time of 25:25 and freshman Jeremy Williams’ 167th place finishing time of 25:39.

“David’s been our most consistent runner,” Uhrich said. “David and Jeremy have both been very consistent, and that’s nice to see out of a freshman and a sophomore, to see them being so consistent.”

Uhrich was also encouraged by Des Roches’ performance. Des Roches missed the first meet of the season because of ankle injuries, and is still coming back.

“Brent has just gotten stronger each week, as he’s gotten back from his injury,” Uhrich said.