Boca Raton, Fla. – Stetson's cross country teams kicked off a new season at the FAU Cross Country Invitational. The men's team finished 4th out of 16 teams and the women's team finished in 5th out of 18 teams.
The Hatters new head coach Nathan Christianson was introduced to the team for the first time Thursday night and he hit the ground running for the first meet on Friday at FAU. The men's team finished with a total time of 1:21:59 with an average of 16:23 per person. The men finished two spots in front of host FAU and twelve spots in front of local rival Bethune-Cookman.
"I was really happy across the board on both sides, just being able to compete in these conditions" said Christianson. "Great first meet, have a lot to work on but we have a lot of energy and a lot of talent. I'm excited with where we're at."
Freshmen
Michael Petrovic led the Hatters with a 16:07.6 to finish 10th overall. Not far behind Petrovic was
Collin Brooks in 12th with a time of 16:18.5.
Conrad Voigt would finish in 20th with a time of 16:28.2 followed by
Robbie Champa in 23rd and
Seth Singer in 26th.
Luke Danison would finish in 46th and the final two Hatters would be Eduardo Diaz in 65th and
Christian Pastrana in 67th. The field consisted of 136 runners overall.
"On the men's side, they had a pretty strong performance at the end, really impressed with the work ethic, we struggled with the heat today but that's part of early in the season," said Chrsitianson. "I'm really impressed with our guys really work hard and it was a good first meet, good first competition."
The Stetson women would finish in 5th place out of 18 with a total time of 1:39:29 with an average of 19:53. The 5th place finished put the Hatters just in front of FGCU, eight spots ahead of FIU and eleven spots ahead of Bethune-Cookman.
Blair Durda would pace the Hatters with a second place finish with a time of 18:15.2,
Juliet Tonkin would be next on the board for Stetson with a finish of 15th with a time of 18:48.6.
Madison Niederriter would finish in 44th with a time of 19:57.4. She would be followed by
Madeleine Empric and
Annabelle Brink who would come across the line back-to-back in 78th and 79th. Rounding out the Hatters team was
Alyssa Colvin who finished 95th with a time of 21:56.6. There were 178 women who competed in the field.
"On our ladies side, Blair was number one today, she had a really strong performance. We're really happy with that," said Christianson. "We had some other people that had a pretty good race, we're really young on the back end so we got to get that back half stronger."
Next up for the women's team is a meet on September 15th at the University of Florida and the men's team will travel to Tallahassee on September 29th for a meet hosted by Florida State.
