At the annual Wesleyan Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 22, the women’s cross country team came in first out of the 11 schools represented, while the men grabbed a respectable third place out of 10. Julia Mark ’13 paced the women’s field of 132 runners with a 5k time of 19:06.1, coming in 1.7 seconds in front of the second-place finisher from Bowdoin. Bryan Marsh ’13 led the Cardinal men and finished sixth out of 95 runners with an 8k time of 26:32.5, a mere 4.3 seconds off the leading time.

Hannah Zimmerman ’13 and Ceili Brennan ’13 also helped power the Cards to victory, as they finished 6th and 7th with times of 19:34.5 and 19:36.0 in the 5k, respectively. Wesleyan won with 49 points, 11 ahead of second-place Bowdoin. The only other teams with fewer than 100 points were Smith and Coast Guard, with Smith finishing third with 85 points and Coast Guard in fourth with 93. Also scoring for the women were Jessica Sherry ’13, who came in 13th (20:03.7) in the 5k, and Dana Louie ’15, who placed 22nd (20:15.7). All 11 runners from the Wesleyan women’s team finished comfortably in the top half of the field.

The men finished third with 89 points, only eight points behind Coast Guard for second place. Meanwhile, a dominant Bowdoin squad grabbed first place with 18 points and locked out the top four positions. Taylor Titcomb ’16 should be pleased with his 12th-place finish in a time of 27:12.6, second among Wesleyan competitors. Rounding out the scoring five for the men were Sam Roth ’13 in 21st (27:47.2), Zak Malik ’14 in 29th (28:11.2), and Keith Conway ’16 in 30th (28:12.1).

It was a good competition for the men and women runners, who will feel confident heading into the Paul Short Run on Friday, Sept. 28 at Lehigh University.  There will be more than 100 teams from all NCAA divisions at Lehigh, but the Cardinals are expected to do well in their section, which will contain more than 40 teams.