The Lafayette men’s and women’s cross country teams were both defeated by Lehigh in last Saturday’s annual dual meet at Metzgar Fields. It’s the 15th straight year the cross country team has fallen to Lehigh in the meet.

Despite the results, Head Coach Jen Curran is proud of her team’s effort and highlights the positives on both the men and women’s sides.

“Both the men and the women followed the race plan, but unfortunately we fell a little short,” Curran said. “We have two front runners and a solid pack of runners right now so we knew going into the race that we had a chance to beat them, but that it wasn’t going to be easy.”

Senior captain Rose Willey once again led Lafayette. Willey finished second in the 6k with a time of 22:57 and was followed by teammate Steph Benko who finished third in 23:04. Freshman Alexa Deemer finished sixth overall in 23:25. She was awarded Patriot League Rookie of the Week honors for her performance.

“The Lehigh team is always very good but we look good as well,” Willey said.

On the men’s side, the Leopards were up against the defending Patriot League champion Mountain Hawks. Lehigh returned all varsity runners from last year’s championship team and had little trouble dispatching the overmatched Leopard runners.

Thomas Day ‘16 was the first Leopard to finish for the men’s squad with a 12th-place time of 27:15.0.

“Tom had a really great race,” captain Andrew Warshauer ’15 said. “He went out with Lehigh’s top guys and hung on for about two miles and went out pretty strong.”

Warshauer finished behind Day in 27:49.7. Fellow junior Andrew Haff finished third in 28:28.

Warshauer described the dual meet as a wake up call for the team.

“The meet gave us motivation to train a little bit harder,” Warshauer said. “Our last workout was the best of the season.”

The Leopards will have another chance to beat Lehigh in their next meet on October 5 in Bethlehem, Pa. in the Paul Short Invitational.