NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. – The Keene State College women's cross country team won its third consecutive Little East Conference championship and league-record 21st overall, while the men's team won its first title in nine years and for the 16th time overall on a sunny and pleasant fall Saturday at the Robert Dowd Cross County Course on the campus of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.
It was a day that marked the continued dominance of the KSC cross country programs, who have combined for 37 of the 54 (69 percent) LEC championships awarded since the Owls joined the league entering the 1997 season.
Maggie St. John led a contingent of five Owl runners in the top 12 on the women's side, placing second overall in 18:44.80.
Sarah Ames (18:49.9),
Kallie Warner (19:00.2), and
Anna O'Reilly (19:11.6) also earned All-Conference honors, with Warner finishing fifth and being named the conference's Rookie of the Year with her fifth-place finish. Warner was 37 seconds faster than the next closest rookie (Isabel Clinton, Eastern Connecticut State University).
Keene State had seven of their runners place in the top 18 overall and ran away with the team title, finishing a whopping 43 points better than second place UMass-Dartmouth (71 points). Eastern Connecticut State came in third with 87 points, followed by Plymouth State University (105 points), the University of Southern Maine (134 points), Rhode Island College (168 points), the University of Massachusetts-Boston (184 points), and Vermont State University Castleton (204 points).
Meanwhile, on the men's side, the Owls returned to conference prominence with
Jake Velazquez dominating the field, winning the 8K race by more than a full minute to become Keene State's first Little East Conference individual medalist Philip Parent in 2015. Velazquez, a Keene native and fifth-year transfer from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, covered the course in 24.25.77, the only runner to break 25 minutes in the field. Plymouth State's Dylan Flewelling came in second in 25:31.3.
The Owls also got top 10 performances from sophomores
Tyler Bolaske (25:55.2) and
Griffin Urnezis (25:58.9), while Ben Tetu (11th, 26:35.0) and
Nick Terranova (30th, 27:12.5) completed the Owl scorers. The Owls totaled up 51 points, five ahead of Plymouth State, which was seeking its second consecutive conference championship. Eastern Connecticut State finished third with 68 points, edging out fourth-place UMass-Dartmouth (72 points). Southern Maine (107 points), Rhode Island College (169 points), UMass-Boston (214 points), and Castleton (248 points) rounded out the eight-team field.
"I'm proud of both these teams," said Keene State head coach
Dan Roark. "Both teams competed hard and everyone did their job. On the men's side, the top five teams going in had a chance to come out on top and it was a battle. The Little East is becoming better each year and speaks to how our teams raced today."
"The support we received from the athletic department, alumni, and community got us to this point and is much appreciated. We are looking forward to our next race at regionals in two weeks."
Velazquez notched his fourth race win individually this year, and is KSC's 14th individual champion on the men's side in conference history since 1997. Mark Miller and Dave Bridgewater, who was inducted into the KSC Athletics/Alumni Hall of Fame this past September, each won it twice. The Owls had the LEC champion nine consecutive times from 1997 through 2005.
Both KSC teams will now gear up for the aforementioned NCAA regional championship, to be held at the Hopkinton State Fairgrounds on Saturday, November 16. The Owl women and men were both ranked eighth in the East Region in the most recent USTFCCCA regional coaches' rankings on October 22.
