The Delaware club cross country team officially started their season with their first NIRCA sanctioned race at the DC Invitational. The team returned to the DC for the time since 2017. This was also the first meet the team was able to debut their new uniforms!

The women led the meet off in the 6,000 meter race. Four freshmen finished inside Delaware’s top seven. Freshman Jade Barrett led the charge with a 7th place finish with a time of 26:01. Fellow freshman Hannah Heredia got second for the team, placing 12th at 27:02. Junior Natalie Pinto came in 14th place at 27:21 to start the season off with a personal best, and coming in not far behind in 16th place at 27:34 was freshman Kaitlyn Burke. Freshman Emma Szydlow finished off the scoring group at 28:35 in her first collegiate race. Madeleine Dorley and Alyssa Blocker rounded out the top seven at 28:43 and 29:12, followed right behind by Madelyn Ciskowski two seconds later.

The men followed the women in the 8k with a clear team victory. Senior Alex Horgan led the field with 26:09, keeping up his winning ways from last year. The freshman trio of Matthew Kwiatkowski, Alejandro Lobo, and Evan Diefenback took the next few spots for Delaware in their collegiate debuts. Kwiatkowski took second at 27:25, Lobo came fifth in 27:49, and Diefenback came seventh in 28:18. Senior Sasha Latina and junior Dan Giron rounded out the top ten spots and Delaware’s top six in 29:12 and 29:48 respectively. The seventh spot when to Arvind Arunachalam in his season debut, who finished a step ahead of fellow sophomore Caden MacHenry, both setting personal bests of 30:44. 

Delaware now looks forward two weeks to October 8th for the DeSalles XC Invitational to face NCAA teams.

Full meet results can be found here.