Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Earn First Place

The men’s and women’s cross country teams both captured another first place finish last Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Aldrich Invitational, thoroughly dominating local competition from Norwich University, St. Michael’s College and Vermont Technical.

The top eight finishers in the women’s race were all Panthers, who won with a score of fifteen points. St. Michael’s came in second with 61 points and Norwich came in third with 65 points. The Panthers’ top five runners were Abigail Nadler ’19 with a time of 19:15.6, Kate MacCary ’19 with a time of 19:23.9, Meg Wilson ’20 with a time of 19:46.9, Talia Ruxin ’20 with a time of 19:52.1 and Rory Kelly ’19 with a time of 19:55.0. Kelly had the one of the largest decreases in time compared to last week’s meet, lowering her time by about 16 seconds.

The men were also able to win with a score of fifteen points since they captured the first six places in the race, and had eight runners in the top 10 finishers. Norwich came in second with a score of 50, St. Michael’s was third with 82 and Vermont Technical rounded things out with 120. The top five runners were Harrison Knowlton ’19 with a time of 26:59.9, Matt D’Aquila ’21 with 27:04.2, Henry Fleming ’20 with 27:13.5, Andrew Michelson ’19 with 27:21.3 and Miles Meijer ’19 with 27:21.8. Fleming improved his time the most, as he lowered it by 29.5 seconds.

The Panthers will face a step-up in competition this weekend when they compete at the Purple Valley Classic in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on Saturday, Sept. 23. The men finished seventh and the women finished 10th in fields of 23 teams last year.