On Saturday November 16th, the Hopkins men’s cross country team made the Blue Jays athletics history books by becoming the program’s first-ever team to clinch the NCAA Mideast Regional Championship.
Continuing with their dominant season, the men’s cross country team took the championship with a score of 62 points. Coming in second was Blue Jay rival Dickinson who scored 88 points followed by third-place Haverford with 106 points.
Leading the Blue Jays with a seventh-place finish was senior Max Robinson. Running a career-fast time in the race, Robinson finished in 24:53.
Robinson was not the only runner to race at a career-fast time, in fact, six of the Blue Jays beat their career-best times. Sophomore Schaffer Ochstein finished eighth, right behind Robinson with a time of 24:53. Also finishing within the top ten was senior Julian Saliani coming in at tenth place with a time of 25:02.
Helping the Blue Jays clinch the title, freshman Stefan Arnold and junior Austin Stecklair stayed in the top twenty, coming in 18th and 19th with times of 25:21 and 25:22, respectively. The cross country team’s number six runner kept the Blue Jays in the top fifties as senior Ryan Alvarez ran a career-best time finishing 33rd with a time of 25:41. Maintaining the top fifty status, the Blue Jays' junior Andrew Ceruzzi ran his second best career time coming in at 50th with a time of 26:02.
With all seven of the Blue Jay runners keeping a pace between 5:02 and 5:15, Hopkins finished with a total time of 2:5:31. Beating Dickinson by 40 seconds, Hopkins scored better with 62 points compared to Dickinson’s 88, successfully giving the Blue Jays the victory. In a celebratory manner after the game, head coach Bob Van Allen had great pride for his team and gave credit to all of his runners, saying “Depth was a factor again today.”
Coach Van Allen has experienced quite the historic season with his cross country team this year, beginning with the Centennial Conference Championship on November 2nd. The men’s cross country team had not won a conference championship in over fifty years, back when the Blue Jays won the Mason Dixon Conference crown. The cross country team however, would end this drought this fall season, successfully defeating Dickinson (39 points) and Haverford (61 points) with a score of 34 points.
Once again leading the pack for the Blue Jays in the Centennial Championships was Robinson, finishing third with a time of 26:01. Freshman Stefan Arnold earned the Centennial Conference Rookie of the Year honors with his tenth place finish and a time of 26:23.
When asked about the win, head Coach Van Allen said, “They won this because they were confident. We’ve had pretty high goals the entire season and now its all coming together, they’re realizing their hard work is paying off and it showed today.”
For the first time in over fifty years, the men’s cross country team brought back a conference championship, and this time it was the Centennial Conference Championship.
“The biggest thing today was how they all set off one another,” Coach Van Allen added, “[winning the conference title] has been a team goal for a while, it wasn’t going to happen unless they were thinking about someone else on the team.”
Shortly after their historic win, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Poll would move the Blue Jays up in the poll from number 32 to number 8 overall in the nation. This monumental jump to number eight is the highest ranking the Blue Jay men’s cross country program has ever held.
“It’s obviously very humbling to be recognized nationally, and it is just a testament to how hard our guys have worked this year,” said coach Van Allen.
Ranking #8 nationally and #1 in the Mideast Region has provided evidence for all the hard work the men’s cross country team has put into their season so far. With a hard battle still in front of them, the Blue Jays cannot spend a lot of time celebrating.
The NCAA Championships are on November 23 in Hanover, IN, and the men’s cross country team still has seven spots to jump before they can claim the number one spot in the nation.
