11/12/2022
Northfield, MN
Lars DeWall (Jr. Stillwater, MN) turned in the best performance by a male Saints runner at an NCAA Regional Championship, finishing in 11^th place in a program- and personal-best time of 24:54.57, in the NCAA North Regional 8k at St. Olaf College.
UW Whitewater's Christian Patzka led a 10^th-ranked Warhawk upset win over the national 4th-ranked UW LaCrosse Eagles, with a winning time of 24:09.15.  
With the team win, Whitewater secured the North region team berth, with the remainder of the top teams in the perennially powerful region waiting for at-large bids to be announced Sunday. 
Saints in 18th of 35 

Behind DeWall's Herculean performance for the Saints, Nathan Neu (Ortonville, Minn./Ortonville HS) (So. Ortonville, MN) crossed the line in 81^st (26:26.45), Jeffrey Kayfes (Buhl, Minn./Mountain Iron-Buhl HS) (Fr. Mountain Iron-Buhl, MN) in 124^th (27:23.0), Joe Lynch (St. Anthony Village, Minn./St. Anthony HS) (Jr. St. Anthony Village, MN) in 132^nd (27:27.6), and Derek Douglas (Escanaba, Mich./Escanaba HS) (So. Escanaba, MI) in 151^st (28:06.3) rounded out the Saints scoring.  Kayfes and Lynch each ran double-digit personal-best times for 8 kilometers.
The Saints finished in 18^th place of the 35 teams present, and 8^th among MIAC programs.
How It Happened
From the gun, a lead group of Whitewater, LaCrosse, and St. Olaf runners formed a lead pack  7 at the front, with only Augsburg's MIAC Champion, Mohammed Bati able to match pace early.  Several seconds back, DeWall lingered within a chasing pack of "the best of the rest," with two Stout runners and a cast of the hopeful individual qualifiers.
As the pace quickened in the last 2 kilometers, the groups pulled apart and strung out.  Still, DeWall stood his ground, emerging to the front of the group with whom he'd spent most of the nearly five-mile journey, coming across the line in 11th, eight-tenths of a second out of the top 10.
On a course not known to hand out personal-best 8k times easily, DeWall bettered his own best 8k by 19 seconds, and ran virtually even with the Saint's program best 8k time that Calvin Boone (St. Paul, Minn./St. Paul Highland Park HS) set in September, before succumbing to an injury in late September. 
DeWall also bettered Boone's 16^th-place finish at the 2021 North Regional, which stood as the Saints men's best NCAA Regional finish before DeWall's 11th.
Nationals Outlook

Whitewater, LaCrosse, and St. Olaf came into Regionals ranked in the top 12 nationally and finished 1, 2 and 3, makng LaCrosse and St. Olaf a near-lock for selection.
UW Stout came into the weekend ranked 28^th nationally—well within a field size of 32 for the national championship— and finished fourth on the day.  They are probable to advance, while #33 UW Eau Claire are on the razors edge for the 32-team National Championship.  
Five men's teams advanced out of the North region in 2021.
DeWall's Chances
The top 7 individuals not qualifying as a team, advance to the NCAA Division III National Championship.  With only one team advancing automatically from the Regional, that creates numerous what-if's.
Luckily for DeWall himself, the what-if's are few to none.  
If LaCrosse is chosen behind Whitewaters automatic advancement, DeWall will move on to nationals as the 7^th and final qualifier. 
Nationals Field Announcement Sunday
The NCAA will announce the 2022 NCAA Division III championship field, Sunday, November 13^th, no later than 3:00 p.m. Central Standard Time.