Junior Erin Wysocki finishes in first place at the Ron Pynn Invitational on Saturday. Photo by Keisuke Yoshimura.

Grand Forks native Erin Wysocki finished first in the Ron Pynn Invitational on Saturday afternoon at Ray Richards Golf Course, running the 5k in a personal best of 17 minutes, 41.7 seconds, beating out NDSU’s Maddie McClellan by more than eight seconds.

The UND women lost the meet to North Dakota State 31-26, but they still ended their regular season on a positive note.

“It’s our last week of the season, and we’ve been training hard for a long time,” Wysocki said. “I did not expect to go out and win it today. I felt good, and I went for it. It’s kind of what we’ve talked about, my coach and I, running hard and aggressive.

“Today I was happy because I actually did go out. The last meet I was a little bit upset because my first mile felt good, but it was too slow, so today I wanted to feel good and be fast.”

Wysocki, a junior, was named team captain at the beginning of this year’s season. She has since paced North Dakota all season, finishing first for the team in every meet thus far. She beat her 6K personal record at the Woody Greeno/Nebraska Invitational where she ran the 6K in 22 minutes, 24.5 seconds, finishing seventh overall among 86 runners, and most recently led UND with a 17th place finish of 134 runners at the SDSU Cross Country Classic.

“She’s one that we’ve talked to about just getting out fast,” UND coach Dick Clay. “She’s in good shape to do it, she just hasn’t done it yet. And I’ve been telling her all year to get out, and she did it today and guess what happened.”

Other top finishers for North Dakota Saturday were Jessica Lynch, who placed sixth with a time of 18:55.2, and Jessica Lindsay, who followed right behind in seventh in 18:56.3.

Also with person records Saturday were UND men Nate Peterson and Sam Saccoman, who finished sixth and seventh in the 8K in 25:39.5 and 25:44.0, respectively.

“It was great to get in front of a crowd that’s cheering for us,” Saccoman said. “Sam is a really fun guy to run with — we’re pretty much on the same level.”

North Dakota State’s Brett Kelly took the individual medal in the men’s race, winning in a time of 24 minutes, 54.6 seconds. UND lost its lone home meet to North Dakota State 15-43, who claimed the top six places in the meet.

“One big thing we wanted to do that we talked about as a team was to try to run a full race, and we haven’t done that yet this year,” Clay said.

Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams will head to Bozeman, Mont. on Nov. 2 to compete in the Big Sky Conference Championship.

“Our goal (at conference) is to hopefully get a spot better than we were last year,” Clay said. “Bozeman is at altitude so we can make a few adjustments but other than that if we can just run our race hopefully that will be enough.”

Marie Monson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].