The cross country team hosted the Patriot League Championships last Saturday at Metzgar Fields for its second and final league meet of the season. The college last held the championship meet in 2016.
The women’s team placed last out of 10 teams with a score of 264 on the 6K course, with junior Liz Borah and senior Casey MacElhiney leading at 48th (22:16.7) and 52nd place (22:28.6), respectively.
“We’re disappointed with how we did as a team, but I do think that we all had a good race that day individually,” Borah said, citing how competition within the league had a “big jump” this year.
Borah, who raced a season PR, explained that she is proud of her race, having almost dropped out at one point.
“I didn’t get the place that I wanted,” she said. “I think that I did a good job of maintaining position and really just trying to keep fighting during the race.”
Sophomore Ava Severino, junior Kira Marr and freshman Anya Kazemi rounded out the top five for the Maroon and White.
The men’s team landed a score of 256, good for eighth place out of the 10 teams on the 8K course. Senior Emil Arangala finished 34th (24:54.6) and junior Justin Brown followed in 49th place (25:14.4), both for PRs.
“We’re satisfied, but not overly happy,” Brown said of the team’s placement, calling eighth place its “baseline.”
“We wanted to do better than eighth, but we are still happy with how we finished,” Arangala echoed.
Brown noted how several runners, like senior A.J. Sanford and junior Titan Casey, who placed 95th (26:50.1), were injured for the meet.
“It’s not fully indicative of what we were capable of, had we been at full strength,” Brown said of the results.
The Leopards will close out the season with the NCAA Regional Championships hosted by Penn State University on Nov. 15.
Borah said that the regionals will “be a good opportunity for us to take what we’ve learned from leagues” in a meet with less pressure for the team to perform well.
“The course is so much fun,” she added.
