By Jack McLoone

After four smaller-scale meets to open the season, Fordham Cross Country competed against 41 other schools at the Paul Short Invitational, hosted by Lehigh. The women’s team pulled off a top-20 finish, coming in 16th with a score of 488. The men finished in 27th with an easy 700.

The top finisher for the women’s team was senior Angelina Grebe, who placed 27th with a time of 21:20. The strength of the competition is reflected in the fact that, over the next 22 seconds, 20 racers crossed the finish line, the last of that group being junior Katarzyna Krzyzanowski, who finished 47th with a time of 21:42.

Also finishing in the top 100 was senior Abigail Taylor, who finished in 22:02, giving her a 78th place finish.

Rounding out the field for the women’s team was junior Sydney Snow (115th, 22:21), sophomore Germaine Harbaugh (221st, 23:17), senior Laurel Fisher (229th, 23:23) and senior Kate McCormack (235th, 23:28).

Yale was the top-finishing team in the women’s 6k race with 118 points behind four top 25 finishers. The race was won by a freshman, Brogan MacDougall from Queen’s University, in a time of 20:21. Queen’s finished in seventh with 373 points.

The men’s team did not have as much success, though once again, junior Ryan Kutch had a strong finish, coming in 13th with a time of 24:33. The next Ram finisher, and the only other Ram in the top 100, was graduate student Brian Cook, who came in 92nd with a time of 25:35.

The final finishers for Fordham were junior Sean Sullivan (179th, 26:11), freshman Brandon Hall (184th, 26:14), sophomore Christopher Strzelinski (228th, 26:46) and junior Patrick Donahue (256th, 27:12).

Utah State was the winner of the meet, accumulating 77 points to edge out Virginia Tech by only three points. Virginia Tech had the winner, Peter Seufer, plus all four runners in the top 10, but Utah State edged the Hokies out thanks to all seven of its runners finishing in the top 40.

The Rams will next be in action at the NJIT Invitational on Oct. 6.