A club running team at Georgia Southern, also known as the run on the rise team, traveled to James Madison in Virginia to compete against nine other teams in the Southeast Regional Championships for the National Intercollegiate Running Club Association, or NIRCA. This was GSU’s first time ever competing in the event.

The tournament included teams from Duke, University of South Carolina, Virginia Tech and Georgetown and was held on Oct. 25. Also competing were Maryland, North Carolina State, Clemson, East Carolina and the host school, James Madison. Virginia won both the men’s and women’s competitions.

According to Steven Mayfield, the president of the GSU Running Club, this was the team’s “first big race.” He said that they made the decision to go to regionals in the middle of September, which gave the team a full month to prepare.

“We competed, and it was a lot of fun,” said Mayfield. The team includes 10 males and six females, and they competed in different track lengths according to gender. Men competed in an 8k competition while women competed on a 6K race.

Sophomore business major Alex Chen said that the GSU team was the only Division II level team at the event, but that they came in 9th in the men’s competition, beating out East Carolina University, a Division I team.

“It was really intense. We weren’t ready for the terrain,” said Chen. The courses that the team competed on were full of inclines due to the hilly terrain of the region, said Chen. In fact, he said one course was on such a steep incline that he and the rest of the team referred to it as “the wall.”

“It went from horizontal to vertical very quickly,” said Chen.

Freshman psychology major Lura Gamble said that she joined the running club to get some friends at GSU.

“I’ve always liked to run for fun,” she said. Gamble said that being on the team helped her “build some friendships.”

Junior civil engineering major Brittany Brickman added that she was on the team to “compete and not have the stress involved with the school team.”

“I just expected to have a good team,” said Mayfield.

The Southeast Region of NIRCA, in addition to the teams at this event, also includes George Mason University, Georgia Tech, the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest University.