The men’s and women’s cross country teams ran out their first race jitters, opening the season Friday with first place finishes at Northern Illinois University.

The men’s team finished with 31 points over the University of Wisconsin (43) and North Central College (58).

“They ran pretty solid this early in the season,” head coach John McInerney said. “It was a rolling course and we had a nice group at 2,000-meters.”

Seniors Jason Bialka and Kyle O’Brien led the pack, with Bialka finishing first in 18:47 and O’Brien following second at 18:55.

“They ran real controlled and went out conservatively. They made a nice move together,” McInerney said.

Wisconsin streamed into the finish with third place through sixth while senior Andy Dirks and junior Dan Mackey held in with a pack from North Central to finish seventh (19:18) and eighth (19:21) respectively.

“Wisconsin didn’t have a full team, but Jason and Kyle handled a couple of nice guys there and Dirks and Mackey had a real good start for them,” McInerney said.

Eric Gruberman finished Eastern’s scoring as the fifth man, finishing in 11th place and Adam Mariott, who was recovering from illness last week, finished 13th overall.

Freshmen Mike Begich and Jessie Landre ran their first collegiate meet, finishing 17th and 20th respectively.

“It was their first real taste and they ran solid in a 64-man field,” McInerney said. “It was good, overall stuff this weekend and we’ll send a bigger group to Bradley next weekend.”

On the women’s side, Eastern finished with 22 points over Northern (37) and Wisconsin-Green Bay (83).

Senior Beth Martin led the race, finishing first overall with a time of 14:58 on the 4,000-meter course.

“Beth had a real nice, confident race. She pulled away and ran nicely,” McInerney said.

Northern’s Alicia Czajka finished second behind Beth, catching up with sophomore Stephanie Bone in the final length of the course. Bone finished in second with a time of 15:14. Senior Lauren Rapacki helped the younger runners, pushing along with Deb Tygrett and Nicole Milici. Rapacki finished sixth overall with a time of 15:42 while Tygrett finished fifth and Milici in seventh.

“We also had three freshmen (Krissy Peters, Angie Simone, and Tygrett) in the top seven and they all ran real nicely,” McInerney said. “They did a real nice job of bunching up and talking to each other.

“They were keeping an eye on each other and they fed off that. They ran more confident and did a good job of finding each other. I was real pleased with that.”

Eastern will face stronger teams this weekend at Bradley University and will bring a larger group to Peoria for the competition.

“One of the nice things is getting the first race jitters out of the way,” McInerney said. “The confidence levels are pretty high on both sides.

“They are believing in their training. There’s more nasty training ahead and they’re realizing that they can train hard during the week and still run hard on the weekend.”