By Staff Writer Elijah Santos.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth drove up to Waterford, Connecticut for a cross country invitational. Both men’s and women’s cross country would show up for matches. The Corsairs are looking forward to their Little East Conference Championships.
At the invitational, 14 nationally ranked universities showed up at Connecticut College to give solid performances. The meet took place on Saturday afternoon at Harkness Park.
Bruno Pires would once again lead the way for the men, with a reputation for setting the pace for the team. Pires would lead the Corsairs to a 13th place finish. Out of 402 runners, Pires would take on the 8k in 25:25.7 finishing in 16th place. Jason Karakaedos followed after Pires in 28th place earning himself a time of 25:43.1. Freshman Carlos Rivera landed himself in 49th place with a time of 26:00.6.
Closing for the corsairs were freshmen Steve Stromski and Jose LeClerc-Rodriguez who would run 164th and 183rd in the contest. Stromski would finish his contest in a time of 27:05.7, while LeClerc-Rodriguez would finish in 27:12.8. Amherst would take home the team title beating runner up Williams and third place Middlebury.
As for the women, Jessica O’Reilly would continue to put up impressive numbers continuing her impressive season. She would finish 41st out of 307 during the meet with a time of 23:00.6 to lead the women in the 6K.
Sophomore Taylor Walsh and Junior Victoria Spitaels followed behind. Walsh would finish 155th with a finishing time of 24:42.6.
While Spitaels would end at 25:16.3. Sophomore Stephanie Brogdon would finish in 273rd with an end time of 27:56.3 and freshman Sabina Gill would close up shop for the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, finishing 288th place and crossing the finish line at 28:30.6.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth women’s cross country would land themselves in 24th place to finish off the invitational.
Middlebury would take home the first place victory, followed by Dickinson, and then Tufts finishing in third place.
Both the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth men’s and women’s cross country will have plenty of time to practice with their next meet being on October 27th.
The next meet will be a Little East Championship match that will take place on at Bryant University in Smithfield R.I. on Saturday.
The men will start their race at 2:00 pm to battle for the title, while the women start at 3:00 pm to race for the championship as well.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth look for their top runners, Bruno Pires for the men and Jessica O’Reilly for the women, to help set the pace for the Corsairs to hopefully run home with two championship titles.
With a two week break both men and women cross country can be expecting a lot of training for their much anticipated battle for the Little East Conference Championship.
PHOTO COURTESY: CORSAIR ATHLETICS