BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Haverford College men's cross country team raced to a 24th-place finish Friday morning at the Brooks-Paul Short Men's Gold 8-kilometer race hosted by Lehigh University.

The Fords, ranked No. 4 in the latest United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) national poll, placed their five scoring runners within the top 175 of the meet's 387 participants representing 42 Division I, II and III teams.

The University of Virginia took the top spot in the team results with 132 points followed by runner-up Georgetown with 149 points. The Fords, with 655 points, were the third highest D-III program in the final results trailing only Allegheny College (21st with 615 points, ranked No. 3 nationally) and St. Lawrence University (22nd with 619 points, No. 8 nationally). Sam Chelanga of Liberty University was the individual race winner in a time of 23 minutes, 34 seconds.

Haverford's Joseph Carpenter was 80th overall and was the fourth-fastest D-III finisher in a time of 25:06. Teammate Anders Hulleberg (84th, 25:07) was the next fastest D-III finisher.

Jordon Schilit (159th, 25:07), Chris Southwick (161st, 25:34) and Eric Arnold (171st, 25:40) rounded out the five scoring places for Haverford.

Those five Fords finished within a spread, the time between the first and fifth finisher, of just 34 seconds. The only teams with a narrower spread were 16th-place New Mexico State (0:17), 17th-place La Salle (0:18) and D-III Rochester (0:33) who finished in 38th-place.

Haverford was 30th at the Paul Short Run in 2009 and eventually closed out its season with an eighth-place finish at the NCAA D-III national championship race.

The 2010 Haverford men will be back in action Saturday, October 16 at the Princeton (Univ.) Invitational