Cross County Returns to the XC Course at Delaware Invitational

The Delaware club cross country team made its return to White Clay Creek State Park for the first time since September of 2019 in the 2021 Delaware Invitational on Saturday. Full results can be found here.

The women started off the morning with a 57 point, second place finish out of a six team field and placed all of its seven runners in the top 30.

Senior Bailey Davin finished 12th and led the way for the Blue Hens with a time of 25:14. Davin’s time is only five seconds off her 2019 performance of 25:09 at White Clay, which is sixth all-time. Senior Talia Brookstein-Burke ran a course personal best of 26:00.2 and in her first ever college race, sophomore Jenna Mlecko finished 17th with a time of 26:04.2.

Senior Allison Einig and junior Madeleine Dorley rounded out the scoring five for Delaware with times of 26:52.5 and 28:36.7. Sophomore Emily Ward and freshman Lauren Pollock in their college cross country debuts took the final two top seven spots with times of 28:55.5 and 29:37.6.

“It’s a really tough course to start out with, but everybody put in a lot of good work today and we had a lot of great results,” Davin said.

On the men’s side, two runners broke the sub-30 barrier including a top 10 all-time performance by junior and Boston College transfer Alex Horgan. Horgan surpassed Chris Kitson and now sits sixth all-time with his 27:04.8 time. Horgan took second place overall.

Senior Paul Filipow placed 12th and crossed the line second for Delaware with a personal course best of 29:38.5. Senior Schuyler Reed, graduate student Bryant Cordova and junior Sasha Latina all finished in under 31 minutes, with times of 30:25.3, 30:28.5 and 30:45.3 respectively. Sophomore’s Cam Harrington and Daniel Giron rounded out the top seven with their first ever 8k times of 31:15.1 and 31:46.3.

“I really enjoyed the hill mid race, it’s in fact so nice I could do it twice,” Filipow said. “Overall, really proud with the team today, really proud to see what we can do for Princeton, Lehigh and beyond.”

The cross country team will travel to Princeton University on Oct. 17 to race at the Princeton Invitational.