The men and women’s cross country team has had a phenomenal start to the season, with the women’s team placing first in all three meets including the University of South Florida open.
Also, the men’s team started the season strong, placing third in their opening meet and following it up with a second and fourth place finish in their next two meets at the UT Early Bird Classic and the UF Invite, respectively.
In fact, the USF open saw the women’s team place five runners in the top-10 including a first place win by junior Chantalle Blundell along with sophomore Claudia Cancello, junior Danielle Kissel, freshman Aislinn Sroczynski and Marissa Yovetich.
Overall, the men’s team finished strong in the race with sophomore Lars Benner coming in at seventeenth place followed by freshman Joey Maus, sophomore Cory Munsch and junior Tyler Blackburn among other Spartan runners.
The UT Early Bird Classic saw more success for the Spartans with Blundell leading UT with a fourth-place finish and a time of 19:25.20.
Her teammate Kissel finished 10 seconds later with C. Cancello finishing next.
The Spartans placed seven runners in the top-20 including runners Aislinn Sroczynski, sophomore Brianna Jackson and freshman Kayla Sullivan.
Five runners from the men’s team were able to place in the top 20 as well including Benner leading the Spartans with an eleventh place finish.
Benner was followed by Tyler Blackburn, sophomore Brendan McGonagle and freshman Mitch Arnold.
“We hope to continue improving, and our top three girls on the team know how to push each other,” said Chantalle Blundell. “I think we were stronger than we were last year, so hopefully that will push us to do well in conference and regionals.”
The UF Invite saw the women’s team take their third straight victory with three of the Spartans finishing in the top five.
Leading the Spartans was Blundell finishing the 5K with a time of 18:20.05, followed by Kissel (18:32.91) and C. Cancello (18:39.25.)
The Spartans also had three more runners place in the top-20 including Spartans Elaina Cancello, Aislinn Sroczynski and Rachel Higgins.
“I think the team is doing really well so far. We have some good freshmen that could definitely make their way up if they continue training and improving,” said sophomore Ariana Sotorpolis. “We also have the runners who are coming back who are doing really well and have been training all summer. We definitely want to make it to nationals, and rank among the top teams.”
The men’s team was led by Benner with a twentieth place finish coming in with a time of 26:11.34.Benner was then followed by Blackburn, Maus and Munsch.
“I feel the strongest area of this team is team spirit, we have great co-captains, who are great leaders,”said Head Coach Jarrett Slaven. “They help keep the other kids focused, and maintained on their workouts while also making it fun. There’s a lot of team bonding and spirit. But when it comes to weak areas we have to get really strong, we need to have the girls placing fourth through seventh move up in order to do well at conference and regionals.”
The men’s amd women’s cross country team has six more meets left in their season.
The Spartans are far from the end of their season, but if their past performance is any indication to the future, they will look to have a promising year in 2014.
Grant Pawlak can be reached at grant.pawlak@spartans.ut.edu