New York College Runners Go for 2016 Nationals

Nov 18, 2016

Last year fans of the NY collegiate runners got an extra thrill from the postseason action as the Syracuse men ran to their first national title in 64 years in NCAA D1 with a squad that included Martin Hehir, Dan Lennon, and Philo Germano as huge contributors. Whether NYers will be able to celebrate again remains to be seen, but Germano is back as a junior on an Orange squad that is ranked 5th in the nation going into Saturday's action at Terre Haute.

On the D1 women's side there is also some room for hope as a Providence squad that is heavily populated with NY greats (Abbey Wheeler, Katie Lembo, Keelin Hollowood) is ranked 3rd and aiming for an upset of favored Colorado. But if the #1 ranked and 2015 Nationals runner-up Buffaloes win, that would also be something to celebrate with a rested freshman Sage Hurta ready to take a team title after so many individual ones in high school.

Other D1 squads ranked in the top 10 with a NY alumnus include Iona with Andrew Tario on board and Washington with Fayetteville-Manlius graduate Kaitlin Neal looking for a national championship for the second year in a row but at a much different level.

But among the more than 80 NY alumni running in one of the D1, D2, or D3 nationals meets this Saturday, the huge majority are in the D3 meet in Louisville. Four of the top 10 ranked teams at the meet on both the men's and women's side include at least one NY alumni, but perhaps the big torch bearers for the state are the SUNY Geneseo squads with 14 NYers, with the male Blue Knights ranked 2nd and the female jousters at 3rd. Last year the Geneseo guys were 3rd and women 2nd, so they are both experienced and well within striking distance of a title for a team that has sent both squads to Nationals for 13 straight years. Isaac Garcia-Cassani captured the D3 Atlantic region race for the second year in a row, and he will be leading the Blue Knights again at Nationals after placing 8th there last year.

But NY based schools will not go away empty from the title hunt this year in any case. The SUNY Delhi guys already started the party going down in Virginia Beach by capturing the USCAA national championship. The Suffolk Community College guys came up a bit short in the NJCAA D3 meet in Canandaigua with a 2nd place.

We've tried to round up the names of all the NY alumni who are Nationals participants or finished in the top 50 or 100 of their regional qualifiers, but a lot of names are missing from the MileSplit database that links NY HS runners to their colleges. In addition, there may be a few runners who were held out of regional meets but are expected to be running for a qualified team at Nationals. Please let us know if there are names that escaped our attention.

The switchboard below will transport you to previews or results sections for the college action. Only the links marked with a "Done" status include completed pages for results at either last weekend's regional or national meets. On the Regional capsules pages, teams displayed in bold are ones that received bids to Nationals.

*Division*	*Stage*	*Who*	*Who*	*Status*	*Location*	*Date*

NCAA D1	Regionals	Men	Women	Done
	Nationals	Men	Women		Terre Haute, IN	Nov. 19
NCAA D2	Regionals	Men	Women	Done
	Nationals	Men	Women		St. Louis, FL	Nov. 19
NCAA D3	Regionals	Men	Women	Done
	Nationals	Men	Women		Louisville, KY	Nov. 19
USCAA	Nationals	Men	Women	Done	Virginia Beach, VA	Nov. 12
NJCAA - D3	Nationals	Men	Women	Done	Canandaigua, NY	Nov. 7