The Pomona-Pitzer men’s cross country team won its second straight national championship Saturday, defending a title it earned for the first time in 2019.
Running at E.P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky, the Sagehens finished with 80 points, 32 points ahead of second-place MIT.
Colin Kirkpatrick PO ’24 was a surprise frontrunner for the Hens, leading the team with a tenth place 8K finish of 24:01.8. Following closely were Derek Fearon PO ’24 in 12th and Lucas Florsheim PO ’24 in 14th. Ethan Widlansky PO ’22, Dante Paszkeicz PO ’22 and Paul McKinley PO ’22 rounded out the Hens’ presence in the race’s top 40.
The win marks the second-ever NCAA title for P-P men’s teams.
Henry Pick HM ’23 took the third place individual time at 23:40.4, leading the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men to a sixth place finish with 225 points and breaking the program’s 8K record, previously set in 2001.
Later on Saturday, the CMS women’s team achieved its highest finish in program history, coming in neck-and-neck with defending champions Johns Hopkins. The Blue Jays took the national title with 130 points to the Athenas’ 132, both clear ahead of third place SUNY Geneseo (168).
With CMS leading 66-84 through four runners, the razor-thin result came down to each team’s fifth placer.
Meredith Bloss HM ’23 led the runner-up Athenas with a 21:17.4 13th-place finish in the women’s 6K, joined by Natalie Bitetti CM ’24 in 16th and Riley Harmon SC ’22 in 19th.
Pomona-Pitzer’s women finished in tenth with 364 points.
This is a breaking story and will be updated with more information.
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