Men’s and women’s cross-country start off strong
Sophomore Jeff Horvath led the men’s cross-country team to a fir st-place finish at the Delaware Invitational. Horvath finished third overall out of 94 Division II and III competitors.
Alexander Cattermole, Contributing Writer
The College’s cross-country teams work to bring a positive attitude to each meet and practice. At every practice, runners continue to push each other and, with the longest roster in school history, there is plenty of competition.
Veteran Seniors Christine Esposito and Kerry Campbell are two runners that provide the leadership required to imprint that team-first spirit among the underclassmen.
The primary goal for both the men and women is to win the Centennial Conference Championship as well as to compete in the NCAA D-III Midwest Regional.
The Shippensburg Invitational was the first event of the year for the cross-country teams and the men finished 6th out of eight teams while the women’s team took 4th out of seven.
One week later, competing against rivals Dickinson and Franklin & Marshall at the Little Three Meet in Gettysburg, the men failed to score a win. Meanwhile, the women were able to beat F&M, but fell short to a nationally-ranked Dickinson team.
The next two weeks of the season, the Lady Bullets won first-place in both the Delaware Invitational and the Frostburg State Invitational. Esposito finished first at the Delaware Invitational to lead the Bullets with teammate Alex Bull taking the No. 2 spot, finishing 41 seconds behind Esposito. Eighty-three Division II and III runners were competing at the event.
The men also found success at the Delaware Invitational, winning the event with only 51 seconds between their first runner, Jeff Horvath (3rd overall), and their 5th place runner. Horvath was third out of 94 Divison II and III runners. Gettysburg also took seventh, eighth, nineth and tenth places at the Invitational.
That spread is not a rare occurrence for the Bullets; they have attained a 1:23 split or less between their 1st and 7th runners in every single event this season. The following week, Gettysburg placed 4th overall in the Frostburg State Invitational. Horvath led the Bullets again, finishing 13th among 94 runners at the event. The team’s top five runners were separated by a mere 56 seconds.
The Bullets are looking forward to the Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh University this Friday, Sept. 28. The women are hoping to continue their success from the past two runs while the men aspire to have a performance similar to the one at Delaware.
Both teams will keep pushing each other during practice and, with the each other’s support, they look to make a run at Conference, Regional, and National Championships.
