The women’s and men’s cross-country teams traveled to Slippery Rock University to participate in the Mack Cooper Invitational on Saturday.

With this being the third event on the season, both squads were able to pick up a second-place finish.

Men’s cross-country

The men’s cross-country team took on all opponents who were willing and able as it finished in second-place with an accumulative 43 points, just 11 points behind Malone University, which came in first. The majority of Shippensburg University’s scoring runners finished within the Top 13 at Slippery Rock’s campus.

Senior Kieran Sutton, third, and junior Calvin Conrad-Kline, fourth. finished first for the Raiders, both posting times of 26:38 and solidifying SU’s impressive start to the season.

The next group of Shippensburg runners came in at 11th and 12th-place, with junior Alex Balla taking 11th and senior Braden Bruning taking 12th, both finishing with times of 27:12.

Trailing close behind Balla and Bruning, junior Cole Nissely and sophomore Dominic Stroh both posted times of 27:16 and finished at 13th and 14th place, proving the dominance of SU’s young team.

Consistency was the name of the game as the Raiders had runners finish all over the board, taking hold of their strong second-place finish out of the eight teams. Redshirt freshman Michael Urban finished 21st with a time of 27:44, just before freshman Rob Moser crossed the finish line a second later (27:45), taking hold of 22nd place.

Among other notable finishes, freshman Blake Behney took home 28th place, senior Alec Brand took 29th place and freshman Brian Iatarola took 30th place, all finishing the race with a time of 27:59.

The incredible finish for the team gives hope for the rest of the season as it continues to dominate and improve. The runners finished in packs, relaying SU’s ability to score an incredible amount of points in high-intensity races.

The last Shippensburg runner to cross the finish line was freshman Brian Delany, who placed 50th with a time of 29:26.

Women’s cross-country

The women’s cross-country team traveled alongside the men’s squad to the Mack Cooper Invitational on Saturday and finished in second-place as a team with 40 points.

The No. 22-ranked Raiders finished just three points behind Malone University, the Mack Cooper Invitational champions and the No. 17-ranked squad in all of Division II cross-country. The action-packed race began with an explosion as SU’s runners leapt ahead to lead the pack.

Shippensburg excelled as it had three Top 10 finishers in the nine-team competition. The headliner for the event came when senior Casey Norton won the individual race by an astonishing 21 seconds before the second-place finisher crossed the finish line. Norton, the lead runner for SU and one of the top performers in the Atlantic Region, finished the race in just 22:41 with a pace of 6:05 per mile.

Among the three Top 10 finishers for SU was junior Bryanna Dissinger, who completed the race in 23:20, earning herself a fourth-place finish. The next Raider to come up big was ninth-place finisher sophomore Jackie Kinkead, who ran in at 23:40.

Further scorers for the Raiders included 12th-place finisher sophomore Lindsey Gerlach with a time of 23:48 and 14th-place finisher junior Lizzie Manickas, who posted a time of 24:11.

The team as a whole performed well, having five scorers and consistent packs of runners. Multiple SU runners made a strong push for postseason spots in the Division II powerhouse.

The young team includes freshmen duo Lydia Cagle and Maria Antoni, who finished 19th (24:42) and 28th (25:07) in the Mack Cooper Invitational for SU, and show great potential for years to come as the young runners continue to develop.

The men’s and women’s team continues to dominate in the 2016 campaign and looks ahead to the PSAC Championships, held with the men’s race, on Saturday, Oct. 22, at Kutztown University’s campus.

The men’s cross-country team finished in second place at the PSAC Championships last season, while the women’s team finished in third place at the 2015 PSAC Championships.

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