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| Lauren Buyan |
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| Morgan Clark |
Both of The College of Wooster's teams finished among the top half of the NCAA Div. III field again at the All-Ohio Intercollegiate Championships, with the men coming in sixth-place and the women 11th out of the 21 schools who competed at Friday's meet that annually brings together harriers from across the state in all three NCAA divisions plus NAIA programs. It took place at Elvin R. King Cross Country Course in Cedarville, Ohio.
The Fighting Scots' men's squad improved five spots from a season ago and nearly cracked the top-five of Div. III, finishing ahead of the likes of fellow North Coast Athletic Conference schools Kenyon College, Wittenberg University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and Denison University, while taking 19th of the 41 teams overall, while the women were among the top-11 in Div. III for the fifth-straight year, and 27th overall.
Out of the 143 Div. III runners, senior Morgan Clark, freshman Blake Pecoraro, junior Derrick Marshall, and senior Luke Hutchings-Goetz were all among the top-35. Clark paced Wooster's pack in 21st (72nd out of the 289 competitors from across all divisions) as he covered the 8K course in 26:52.89, while Pecoraro, Marshall, and Hutchings-Goetz were close behind in 25th (27:02.47), 31st (27:09.45), and 33rd (27:12.18), respectively. The Scots' fifth scorer was freshman Roy Hadfield in 81st-place (28:53.96).
Leading the Wooster women was Lauren Buyan, as the junior finished in 34th out of the 140 Div. III runners via a 24:23.08 time during the 6K event, and that was also good for 79th overall (283 total participants). First-year Emily Reid and senior Allison Chin were also among the top-half of the Div. III entrants with respective 59th- (25:18.70) and 64th-place (25:37.91) runs. Other contributors to the team scoring were Kayla Zboran, who took 75th (26:05.10), and senior Ann Berkow, who was 95th (27:15.97).
The Scots have one more tune-up meet before the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships, as they'll be at the WC Fall Classic, hosted by Wilmington College, on Oct. 18.