KEENE, N.H. – It was a beautiful Fall day in the Elm City, and fittingly, it was another productive day for the Keene State College cross country programs as they placed three individuals in the top 10 individually and saw both teams finish in the top 10 among a 27-team field on Saturday at the Owl Athletic Complex.
Interview with Coach Roark
Interview with Tyler Bolaske/Kallie Warner
Interview with Nick Terranova/Harper Borden
KSC combined to register two season-bests and 10 personal-bests, with five of the personal bests helping power the Owl men to a fifth-place team finish with 99 points (they had 202 points last year), just seven points behind 10th-ranked Tufts University's entrants and eight points behind third-place Bowdoin College.
Senior
Tyler Bolaske led the way for the Owls, finishing in a season-best 24:49.8 for a runner up finish, behind Dylan Fiegener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by just four seconds. As he and head coach
Dan Roark have stated in the past, including when he qualified for the NCAA championship a season ago, KSC has aspirations to get their team back onto the regional and national landscape – given that, today could go down as a key step in that process, with four of the next five finishers all registering personal best times including junior Nicholas Terranova, who finished ninth in 25:24.8 – 34 seconds faster than his time two weeks ago at Wesleyan University and nearly 36 seconds better than his Little East championship meet in Keene a season ago. Sophomore
Andrew Klinedinst came in 20th in the 264-runner field in 25:41.9, while senior
Griffin Urnezis placed 31st in 26:01.3. Klinedinst's time represented a near 35-second improvement from the Wesleyan meet and is well over a minute better than his LEC time last season. Freshman
Harper Borden made the debut on his home course a memorable one, placing 40th in 26:20.5 to edge out fellow rookie Brayden Dunn of the LEC's Eastern Connecticut State University by three tenths of a second after finishing behind him in the last head-to-head race. Ben Tetu was also right behind in 42nd with a time of 26:20.9.
Jonathan MacQuarrie also registered a season-best 27:18.8 time to finish in 88th, and
Alex Vaccaro also joined the personal-best crew in 28:30.5.
No. 12 Williams College won the men's team title with 55 points, edging out 21st-ranked MIT by three. Then came the Bowdoin-Tufts-KSC trio to round out the top five, with sixth-place Eastern Connecticut finishing 110 points behind the Owls.
On the women's side,
Kallie Warner placed fourth individually in the 244-runner field, finishing in 22:10.2 to better her time from two weeks ago by 14 seconds – a finish that was a minute and 20 seconds better than her Little East time from 2025. Warner stayed with the lead pack nearly the whole way, coming up nine seconds shy of a runner-up finish.
Two other top 100 placements helped fuel the Owls' ninth place team finish, with
Rita Cummings placing 74th in 24:14.9 and
Ellie Tighe just seconds behind, in 24:17.5 to finish 78th.
Ava Fortin finished in 24:40.0 (101st) and
Hannah Duva in 24:52.4 (114th) to round out KSC's top five scorers.
Eleni Papadopoulos (25:06.1)
Summer Bentley (25:07.5) added new personal bests to the Owls' day.
Second-ranked Williams swept the team titles, winning the women's side with 33 points. KSC was the second-highest finishing LEC team with 326 points, finishing one spot behind defending LEC champion Plymouth State University (255 points).
The Owls return to action in two weeks at the Connecticut College Invitational with the conference championship meet looming on Halloween as the KSC men look to again defend their crown and the women look to gain revenge on Plymouth. This year's LEC championship will be hosted at Vermont State University Castleton.
