John Miller's 347 Blog

After the UW-Whitewater men’s and women’s cross country teams both started the season off with top-two finishes, the men placed sixth and the women finished ninth at the Blugold Invitational Sept. 29 in Colfax, Wisconsin.

The men’s team tallied a total time of 2:11:05 in 13-team, eight-kilometer race, 32 seconds off the pace of fifth-place St. Olaf.

“It was good [the men’s placement] because we have a couple guys injured right now,” head coach Jeff Miller said. “Without them we figured, we’ll see what the young guys can do and they did well. We did very well for where we’re at in the season and our training.”

The women finished with a total time of 2:01:26 in the 15-team, six-kilometer race, right behind conference foes UW-Stout, UW-Oshkosh and UW-Platteville.

“The women ran a lot of personal records, they just had really nice races,” Miller said. “From a standpoint of how we’re progressing with our training, we had positive results from the meet. In the team play standpoint, we were probably a little under what we’d like to achieve.”

For the men, it was senior Brett Harms that led the way with a time of 25:14.6, good for sixth place out of 257 runners.

Harms, a 2016 All-American, now has a first place and sixth place finish under his belt to start the season, but said he can improve even more.

“I’m building on last year’s success,” Harms said. “I was happy with last year, but I also want to do a lot better than last year.”

Freshman David Fassbender came in second for the Warhawks and finished 38th overall with a time of 26:13.7.

Senior Alec Meixelsperger clocked in at 26:23.5 for a 44th place finish, with freshman Kyle Neuroth right behind at 26:24.6 at the 45th spot.

On the women’s side, it was junior Liz Mielke with the top time and personal record for the Warhawks at 23:40.4, good for the 54th placement.

Mielke, who finished second for UW-W in the team’s first meet of the year, contributed her early success to her team and coaches.

“We just have a lot of good momentum on our team right now,” Mielke said. “It’s really nice to come to practice and know you’ll get a good workout in with people who are all on the same page.”

Other Warhawk runners to crack the top 100 finishers on the women’s side were freshman Jessie Braun (23:54.9) at 63, junior Manda Slaback (24:26.4) at 82 and sophomore Sydney Prestifilippo (24:34.0) at 93.

The Warhawks will have a week off before both teams head to the Cowbell Classic, a meet that Miller noted as one of the most important of the year, on Oct. 14 in Elsah, Illinois.

The news I am most interested in is sports news on a national level. I would also say I have some level of interest of sports on the state level, but I don’t really have any intrigue with sports on the local level. I will check in on big national stories, such as the recent hurricanes, but that’s about the extent of my interest in national news of such variety.

I rarely look at the news from my hometown, The Janesville Gazette. Unless something unusual or intriguing happens in my hometown, I usually don’t pay attention to my local news. I know that some places around campus here at UW-Whitewater give out the Gazette, and the content is pretty easily accessible online, still, I rarely find myself looking at my local paper.

My most visited online news site is ESPN. It’s a convenient and well-crafted news for all of the news content I’m interested in. If I’m looking for a big national story to read about, I’ll simply just type key words into google and just click on the first few websites that come up.

When I consume content on ESPN, most of the time it is done with text, pictures, and short video clips. I prefer just to read the text, simply because that’s the most enjoyable way I feel like I can consume the content.

I don’t think I have ever interacted with a news article online by posting a comment. Really, if I’m that interested in a story that I want to discuss it, I’ll find a friend in real life to talk about the subject with.  I have never emailed a reporter or submitted relevant content to a news site.

As someone who does not have a Facebook or Twitter, all my news is searched for by myself. I don’t read blogs, just because I don’t think I’ve ever really come across one without searching for it, and most of the time the articles on big news sites are simply better. Podcasts, however, are something that have peaked my interest in recent years. I use podcasts as an extension of the news I already consume myself with. So, lots of times I’ll just put on a sports podcast that deals with news and other content when I am driving or maybe walking to class. Most of the sports podcasts are linked to a sports news site online, so it’s all connected.

If I ever feel like a news source may be unreliable and inaccurate, I’ll try and do some research myself. But, usually the first step is to just check other news sites that deal with the same issue or topic, and see if there are any major differences. Preferably, I’ll check another news site that I feel has a different perspective than the one I am questioning. I can’t recall ever finding out a story I read was fake. Overall, my digital self is very centered around one type of news on one news site.

I’m looking forward to hopefully having a great fall semester here at Whitewater.

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