Div III Cross Country Roundup
NYU won the East Regional on Saturday at Van Cortlandt Park and moves on to the NCAA Division III national cross country championship meet Saturday in Minnesota. The Violets were men’s NCAA runnersup a year ago. The team that defeated them a year ago, Calvin College of Michigan, is the team to beat again. Calvin has been ranked #1 in the national polls all season, Nick McDonough’s NYU squad #2.
“We’re just where we want to be at this point,” McDonough said after Saturday’s Regional, in which the Violets scratched out a narrow victory over highly regarded SUNY Cortland, 37-46. “Let’s just hope it’s good enough.”
“We did what we had to do to get the job done.”
The Cortland Red Dragons, coached by Matt Moran, are ranked 4th nationally.
Both squads are exclusively Northeast runners, in spite of NYU’s international reputation academically.
Hany Abdallah (Madison, NJ) finished 2nd to Peter Kosgei of Hamilton College in the Regional, followed by Jesse Schneider (Delhi, NY), 4th; Ryan Williams (Milltown, NJ), 5th; James McCarthy (Red Bank Catholic, NJ), 12th, and Spenser Popeson (Linwood, NJ), 14th. All are seniors except for Schneider, a junior.
Cortland is an all-Empire State squad: Seth DuBois and Justin Wagner of Guilderland, Shamus Nally of Burnt Hills/Ballston Lake, Josh Henry of Homer and Jerry Greenlaw of Warwick Valley. DuBois was 3rd on Saturday.
At the 2006 NCAA, Calvin defeated NYU 37-92; Cortland finished 4th.
In the women’s Eastern regional, Geneseo and Plattsburg tied for 1st with 41 points. Geneseo is ranked 4th in the U.S. in Div. III, Plattsburg 6th. Liz Montgomery of Geneseo was the individual winner.
At the New England Regional, Amherst and Williams went 1-2 in both sexes. In the men’s, Amherst won 117-118; in the women’s Amherst, the nation’s No. 1-ranked team, won 40-96.
A number of other teams from the Northeast qualified or were selected as at-large entries to the championships, including: Men Haverford, Dickinson, Geneseo, College of New Jersey, Trinity (Conn.), Bowdoin Women Dickinson, Haverford, Bowdoin, Colby, Elizabethtown, Ithaca, Johns Hopkins, Middlebury and CNJ. Individuals also qualified from St. Lawrence and Nazareth.
The championships will be hosted by St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn.
/JP/