On the warm Saturday afternoon of September 14, the Rensselaer cross-country team opened their season at Franklin Park in Boston with the Engineers’ Cup. The race, appropriately named for its competition between rival engineering schools; MIT, RPI, and WPI, provided the Engineers with their first challenge of the season.
Both the women’s and the men’s teams finished a strong second to MIT, while outdistancing WPI and overcoming the afternoon heat.
The women’s team, losing to MIT’s score of 27, finished second with 45 points, comfortably in front of WPI with 61 points. In cross country, the finishing places of each team’s top five runners are added up, so the low score wins! The RPI women were led by their team captain, junior Rebecca Rosenberg-Beran, with a fourth place finish of 20:26. Rosenberg-Beran’s 5K finish was closely followed by her fellow junior, Cara O’Toole in fifth place at 20:36. The remaining scoring runners came in a tight pack, which included juniors Leah Underwood and Claire Lears and first year Caitlyn McCullough. Underwood, making a comeback from injury last season, led the pack with a 13th place finish of 21:24. McCullough followed in 14th place with the same time. Lears finished moments later in 21:31, good for 15th place. Rounding out the top seven were juniors Jessica Orsak in 20th place with a 22:06 and Edith Werpachowski in 23rd place and 22:21.
The subsequent men’s 8K race resulted in a very similar standing as the Rensselaer team achieved a total score of 45 compared to MIT’s score of 16. WPI was a distant third with 85 points. In the very first cross-country race of his career, junior Keith Weiss led the RPI men with a time of 26:55 and an overall fifth place finish. Senior team captian Duane Crammond was the Engineers’ second finisher moments later in seventh place with a time of 27:18. Freshmen John Evans finished third on the team in 13th place overall leading the strong RPI pack which also included junior Doug Dukes, sophomore Bob Baniak, junior John Bonnett, senior Travis Bashaw, and sophomore Josh Schuster. Only 13 seconds separated RPI’s thee through eight runners.
Both teams were pleased with the effort and the depth of its members, as displayed by the several strong packs of Rensselaer runners. The cross-country team also hopes to improve on their first performances as they look forward to a successful and exciting fall season. Next up is the Purple Valley Classic hosted by Williams College this Saturday.
