Saturday Sept. 25, the Elizabethtown College Cross Country team traveled to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. for the Dickenson Long/Short Invitational. Both the men and women’s teams finished in third place in their longer events.
The longer event for the men is an 8-kilometer run and for the women it is a 6-kilometer run. The men ran against 20 other schools while the women ran against 17.
“Our conference championship and regional championship are both 8k in distance, so our coach wanted us to get some practice and a few races in before that part of the season,” senior Christian Schaaf said. “That way we know what the distance is like, how it feels and how to run it.”
Hagerstown Community College and Messiah University placed first and second in front of Etown’s men.Dickinson College and Misericordia University placed first and second in front of Etown’s women’s team. As both teams focused more on the longer runs than the shorter runs, the men placed seventh out of 19 and the women placed 15th out of 18 in the shorter runs.
“Our goal as a team is to qualify for nationals at the end of the season, so some of the schools we really focused on beating were Messiah, York and Dickinson because they are in our region,” Schaaf continued.
The men came in only a few points behind Messiah University, who they will continue to work towards defeating. Since Hagerstown Community College is not located in the team’s region, they were not very concerned with their performance.
Etown junior Nicholas Garrett placed third overall with a time of 26:28.6 followed by Schaaf who placed eighth overall with a time of 27:22.2. Coming in third for Etown in the 8k was junior Matthew Fick with a time of 28:36.2. Fick placed 23rd overall.
Sophomore Kelty Oaster placed first for the Etown women’s team and sixth overall in the 6k with a time of 24:10:4. Senior Hallie Weaver and junior Madison Webber placed 18th and 21st respectively with times of 25:07.8 and 25:14.4.
“We were about 5 points behind Messiah… as we continue to gain experience I think we have a lot of potential for the rest of the season,” Schaaf finished.
