The women, increasing their normal racing distance from 5K to 6K, finished with excellent times to capture fourth place with a total score of 97 points. “We did really well running as a team today, since it’s the first time anyone has ran a 6K,” commented team captain, Rebecca Rosenberg-Beran. Rosenberg-Beran provided a commanding lead for the Rensselaer women and earned First Team All-UCAA honors for finishing fourth overall in a time of 23:49. Among the other leading scorers was a pack formed between junior Cara O’Toole finishing 20th in 25:15, freshman Caitlyn McCullough finishing 22nd in 25:22, and junior Leah Underwood finishing 23rd in 25:30. Concluding the top five was junior Claire Lears with a time of 25:52 for 29th place. In addition to finishing performances, many of the women improved their 5K times for the season even though they continued the race for another kilometer. Head Coach Colin Tory was very pleased with the team’s first effort at 6K. “As a team we ran better as the race went on. Everyone ran very well for 5K and still were in position to finish strong and move up over the last K of the race.”

The men’s team also achieved another excellent performance while racing on the St. Lawrence 8K course. “The guys worked very well as a pack today … it was very impressive,” commented senior team captain Duane Crammond in praise of his team. The men used this valuable teamwork to clinch second place with a score of 60 points. The top five scoring runners finished consecutively between places 10 and 14 by running in a tight pack spanning only 18 seconds. Lead runner, junior Keith Weiss, finished 10th in 27:14, followed by Crammond in 27:23, then by senior Travis Bashaw and junior Bob Baniak in 27:27 and 27:28, respectively. Completing the pack in 14th place was junior Doug Dukes with a time of 27:32. Finishing only 13 seconds behind this pack was junior John Bonnett in 18th place with a time of 27:45 and freshmen John Evans in 19th with 27:47. This put the top seven runners in a range of about 30 seconds, which is a goal that every cross country team works towards.