PORTLAND, Ore. – Coming off of his first-ever collegiate cross country win at the Gage McSpadden Memorial Invite last Friday, Montana State University Billings cross country runner Ase Ackerman earned Great Northwest Athletic Conference Runner of the Week honors on Monday, Sept. 20.
 
"It's a really great honor for Ase and our team to win this weekly athlete recognition," MSUB head cross country coach Jonathan Woehl said. "It's a testament to how hard he's worked over the summer and into the fall. He's been seeing some of those results pay off this season, but I know if you talked to Ase, he'd say there's a lot of improvements to make and a long way to go. But I'm excited for this for Ase, and I'm eager to see where he and the team winds up finishing at the end of the season."

Friday marked not only Ackerman's first collegiate cross country win, but also the men's team's first individual win since Jorey Egeland won MSUB's Yellowjacket Invitational on Oct. 7, 2017. Adding to the list of firsts, Ackerman's award is the program's first since Robert Peterson won the award on Sept. 9, 2014.

"I have hoped to win a GNAC Athlete of the Week award since I started competing here back in 2018," Ackerman said. "To finally have done that is great and it gives me a lot of confidence once we get our team back together and race against some great competition before the GNAC Championships."
 
Ackerman covered the hilly, 6-kilometer course at the Spearfish Canyon Country Club course in 19:21.5 (5:11 per mile), in which he and South Dakota Mines runner Tim Dunham separated themselves from the rest of the pack by the first kilometer. Yet Ackerman didn't want to expend too much energy to pass him in the early goings; instead, he stuck no more than 10 meters behind Dunham throughout the first few loops.

His patience paid off.

In the second half of the course's second, two-kilometer loop, Ackerman overtook Dunham and held onto the lead for good, finishing with a nine-second win.

"I took the lead and knew that I was going to win as long as I gave my best effort," Ackerman said. "It was a difficult race, but it felt amazing to win my first collegiate cross country race."
 
"He did a good job being consistent on every loop," Woehl added. "He started off well and kept a good pace throughout the race."
 
UP NEXT: Ackerman and the Yellowjackets will take a five-hour drive along I-90 to Missoula, Mont. for the Montana Open on Friday, Sept. 29. The men's 7K will start at 4 p.m. and the women's 5K will start at 4:45 p.m.