By Nick Rosa
Following a meet in Hartford, the CCSU cross country team hosted their third meet of the season, the eighth annual Ted Owen Invitational, in which the men’s cross country team came out on top with 29 points and the women finished fifth with a total of 132 points.
The CCSU men finished first with 29 points, while Northeastern University finished in a close second with 30 points, followed by University of Hartford with 101 points and University of Rhode Island with 125 points.
The CCSU women finished fifth with 132 points trailing behind Robert Morris with 113 points, UConn with 65 points and URI with 47 points. Northeastern won by one point with 46 points.
Northeastern runner Eric Jenkins placed first overall on the men’s side with a time of 25:22 and Caitrin Demchko of URI placed first overall for the women with a time of 18:10.
Unlike the first meet where the CCSU men held out five of its top seven runners, this meet the Blue Devils held out two of the top seven. The women were missing one of their top runners as well.
The men were lead by Sam Alexander and Ry Sanderson placing second and third in the race.
“The two of us wanted to stick with each other and push each other, and we both finished at the same time, it’s not a race between us,” Alexander said.
The two were keeping pace with each other the entire race and communicating throughout on how to run the race.
“We were motivating each other to catch the front runner from Northeastern, but once we noticed we weren’t going to catch up we decided to shut it down and save ourselves,” Sanderson said.
The combo of Alexander and Sanderson kept tempo the entire race and didn’t look back.
“The race was good and I’m happy with what I saw from both the men and the women’s teams. Both teams looked strong in the last mile of the race,” Coach Eric Blake said.
Blake added that this was Sanderson’s and Alexander’s first competitive race of the year and said that, “Ry and Sam looked great but it’s good to get their racing in, they know they’re getting ready for the bigger races in October and November.”
Alexander and Sanderson went two and three and tied with a time of 25:53, Craig Hunt finished fifth with 26:36, John Kroll finished seventh with 26:51 and Rob Weston finished 12th with a time of 27:22.
“I am extremely pleased for this being my first race of the season, especially with a rough summer of injuries,” Alexander said.
Katherine Bossardet finished seventh with a time of 18:32 for the women while Amanda Asaro placed seventeenth with a time of 19:06 and Nicole Coiteux placed twenty fifth with 19:21.
Katherine Bossardet, who only was 22 seconds off the leader, felt better today in her racing than in the beginning of the season.
“We had a good meet today and we all pushed very hard,” Bossardet said. “I would like our top seven to be more together in the race and close the gap between each other but we were aggressive and there were a lot of conference teams here so it was good to compete against them to be ready for NEC’s,” she added.
The men’s top three runners this week were all within a minute and a half of each other, with Sanderson and Alexander within thirty seconds. The women’s top two runners, Bossardet and Asaro, were within a minute of the top runner.
Both teams compete next at the New England Championships on Oct. 9 at Franklin Park in Boston.
