In the snow and mud of Bloomington, Ind., Saturday, the men's and women's cross country teams' seasons came to an end at the District IV championships.

The men finished 15th out of 26 teams, and the women finished eighth out of 27. With these finishes, neither team qualified for the NCAA championships. Also, neither team will have an individual runner at the championships. Ben Myers was the top finisher for the men in 41st place (33 minutes flat), and the women's best was Melissa Converse, who finished 19th in 18:40.

The women went into the meet as the Mid-American Conference champions and were considered one of the favorites to clinch a berth in the NCAA championships. Instead, the team was beaten out for the berths by the other favorites. Wisconsin (44 points) finished in first place, while Michigan finished second with 56 points. Ohio had 222 points.

"It was a disappointment," said Jacki Waller, who finished 19th overall in 19:31. "We all unfortunately picked the same day to do poorly."

The men's team entered the meet in a situation opposite the women. With many of its top runners sidelined because of injuries, Ohio didn't expect to do much. Plus, freshmen R.J. Dorazil and Bill Huffman competed in their first 10K race (District and NCAA championship races are run at 10K instead of the usual 8K.).

As a result, Myers said a top-10 finish would have been a great achievement.

"I figured we had a shot at 10th place, at least," Myers said. "It was a pretty tough task, though, especially for the freshmen and the conditions."

The top overall team was Michigan who had 21 points. Ohio had 398.

As far as the season as a whole, both teams did extremely well, despite the injuries to their top runners.

"The men didn't have enough leadership and experience to overcome the injuries to Gavin O'Neal and Josh Ritchie," Banton said. "The women did, with Kristin Diehm and Julie Kline leading the way. They could have laid down and died when Jackie Conrad went down for the season, but they hung in there and wound up winning the MAC."