Best race of season comes just in time for team

What a difference a month has made for the Hoosiers. \nOnly a month ago, the IU women's cross country team returned to campus from Minnesota's Roy Griak Invitational with a disappointing 15th-place finish. On Sunday, the Hoosiers captured fourth place at the Big Ten Conference cross country meet on the same Minnesota course that had flustered them earlier in the season.\nMichigan, Illinois and Minnesota were the only teams to finish ahead of the Hoosiers. However, each of these teams is highly ranked and, on paper, were assumed to dominate the meet no matter how well anyone else ran.\n"The top three teams are all ranked in the top 11 in the country and we weren't that far off of them even with one of our top three runners not finishing the race," junior Jessica Gall said.\nAs is typical with Judy Wilson-coached teams, the Hoosiers appear to be building a head of steam going into the IU-hosted Great Lakes Regional in two weeks. A top five Big Ten finish, one of the Hoosiers' season goals, might be precisely what IU needed in order to attempt to qualify for nationals.\n"It's encouraging because we did what we needed to do but we have so much more," senior Kelly Siefker said. "I think that's just exciting because we know we can improve."\nGall led the Hoosiers again, finishing ninth with a time of 21:30.14. Immediately behind Gall was junior Lindsay Hattendorf, who finished in 10th place, .75 seconds behind her teammate. \n"It's the same as workouts. You don't really need to think about it. You just need to go out there and do it and be competitive and that's what I thrive off of is the competition," Hattendorf said.\nRounding out the top five scoring runners for the Hoosiers were freshman Wendi Robinson, junior Kristin Whitezell and Siefker.