WAVERLY, Iowa – Led by individual champion Anders Hulleberg, the Haverford College men's cross country team captured the 2010 NCAA Division III title Saturday morning on the 8-kilometer H. J. Max Championship Cross Country Course of host Wartburg College.
The Fords' 87 points outdistanced runner-up, and defending champion, North Central College's 104 points. St. Lawrence University finished in third with 137 points and fellow Centennial Conference competitor Dickinson College finished fifth.
Hulleberg covered the course in a winning time of 24 minutes, 22.2 seconds, closing out a postseason in which he also won the Centennial Conference and Mideast Regional individual titles. Michael Spain of North Central trailed Hulleberg across the finish line by two seconds.
All five of Haverford's scoring runners finished ahead of the All-America cut (35th-place). Senior Chris Southwick was 19th in a time of 24:43.5 and senior Lucas Fuentes was close behind in 21st (24:45.6). Sophomore Jordan Schilit finished 31st (24:52.2) and junior Eric Arnold closed out the scoring positions for Haverford posting a time of 24:53.9 for a 34th-place finish.
Senior Joseph Carpenter (60th, 25:12.4) and junior Tim Schoch (95th, 25:25.8) both ran well during the Fords' chase to the championship.
Hulleberg, the Mideast Region and Centennial runner of the year, defeated the 2008 national champion, Peter Kosgei of Hamilton (sixth Saturday), as well as North Central's top runner, Michael Spain (3rd in 2010), the individual runner-up from its championship season last year.
The microchip technology used for the timing system was able to give race followers a glimpse into the mid-race scoring. Using the chips, the timing system placed Haverford in front of North Central by a narrow 96-99 margin at the 3-mile mark. The Fords opened up the distance between the two teams over the remainder of the race.
The team championship is the first NCAA Division III crown by any Haverford athletic team. The Scarlet and Black's men's soccer team won 'national' titles in 1906, 1907, 1908, 1915 and 1917 under the flag of the Intercollegiate Soccer Football League. The 1926 team was named the mythical national champion by the Intercollegiate Soccer Football Association. The initial NCAA soccer championship was contested in 1959.
The storied cross country program at Haverford — appearances in 28 national championship race and 14 top-10 finishes — led by 2010 Mideast Region coach of the year Tom Donnelly has had just two individual champions prior to Saturday. Seamus McElligott won the 1990 race for the Fords' eighth-place team and current assistant coach J.B. Haglund wore the crown in 2001 for his 12th place teammates.
Three times in program history have the Fords placed two runners on the All-America team in a single year but never more than two marking the 2010 squad as among the best teams in Haverford's history.