The Saints finished in a tie for 5th place in the 15-kilometer Classic race at the CCSA Qualifier held in Marquette, Mich., on Sunday morning.

The Saints and Gustavus Adolphus registered 45 points in the team totals, trailing 4th place Wis.-Green Bay by only five points.

Northern Michigan captured the team title in the Classic race with 78 points, two points ahead of Michigan Tech.

St. Scholastica junior Jason Kask (Duluth, Minn./Duluth East HS) was the top finisher for the Saints, racing to 22nd place in a time of 51 minutes, 9.5 seconds.

Freshman Waylon Manske (Bemidji, Minn./Bemidji HS) (31st, 52:08.3) and senior Bjorn Bakken (Duluth, Minn./Marshall School) (32nd, 52:18.9), following a day in which the pair helped lead the Saints to a 3rd place finish by racing to top-10 finishes in the 10K Freestyle, rounded out the scoring for St. Scholastica.

"When you have such a great day in this sport," said head coach Chad Salmela referring to the team's 3rd place finish ahead of Mich. Tech and UW-Green Bay on Sat., " as a coach you feel it can go two ways; it can bring some momentum to the second day, or it can leave you a little deflated from the first day's efforts."

In these slow, cold [minus-4 degrees] conditions," continued Salmela, "it's hard to pull out another great race out as a team, especially from guys like Bjorn and Waylon who are both historically very strong skaters."

Salmela was pleased to see Kask step to the front in Classic on Sunday as the junior from Duluth who narrowly missed qualifying for last year's NCAA Championships -- along with teammate Tyler Kjorstad (Duluth, Minn./Marshall School) -- is, like Kjorstad and to some extent Manske, just beginning to hit his Nordic stride after completing a fall season with the men's cross country team at the College.

For the weekend the Saints finished in 5th place in the two-day team standings.