The Red scored a solid season-opening win this past Friday against Army and Binghamton. The men’s team finished the meet with a low score of 18 points to Army’s 53 and Binghamton’s 64 to seal its victory. The women’s team boasted a low score of 17 points to Army’s 46 and Binghamton’s 82, ensuring a strong win for the Red. 

A sport in which the low score wins, senior co-captain Katie Kellner broke down how scoring works in cross country. 

“The top five runners from each team score,” she said. “The number of points you score depends on your place. The first place runner scores one point, and so on. The winner is determined by who has the lowest score.” 

Women’s coach Artie Smith ’96 expressed how pleased he and the coaching staff were at his team’s performance. 

“We were very happy with this as a first meet,” he said. “I was really pleased with how well [my athletes] competed. They handled the conditions of the meet really well.”

Kellner was the women’s top performer at the meet — finishing the 5K course in a time of 17:02.50, which was good enough for a first place finish. 

“It’s always good to start off the season with a win,” Kellner said. “The whole last mile was downhill, so it was fun to finish strongly because it gives you confidence going into the rest of the season.”

Although both the men’s and women’s teams finished the meets with victories, men’s coach Zeb Lang ’03 said that that the teams still have a lot of work to do for the remainder of the season to progress well. 

“I’m seeing the potential for a group of five to seven guys to run together and push each other,” he said. “We still have a lot of work to do though to get there.”

For the men’s team, sophomore Ben Potts finished the 8K course in a time of 24:09.80 to finish first overall, with senior Adam Trofa finishing second overall seven seconds behind Potts. The men’s team was able to place 12 runners in the Top-20 overall. 

The women’s team was able to take four out of the Top-5 finishing times, with Kellner finishing first overall, junior Devin McMahon finishing second, junior Rachel Sorna finishing third and freshman Caroline Kellner rounding out the Top-5 with the fifth overall finishing time. 

According to Smith, such great results always show evidence of a hard-working team. 

“The work we’ve done in the first couple of weeks showed in our results,” he said. “They don’t just do quality workouts, they’re also able to put out quality racing.”