BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Haverford College's men's cross country team raced to a 17th-place finish Friday morning in the Gold race of the Paul Short Run hosted by Lehigh University. The Fords were one of only four Division III programs participating in the Gold event which was filled mostly with D-I programs.

Villanova University captured the race with 69 points. Haverford's total of 511 points eclipsed D-I programs such as Temple (19th place, 518 points), the U.S. Military Academy (23rd, 653), Va. Commonwealth (29th, 818) and New Hampshire (34th, 882). Boston College finished just ahead of the Fords with 504 points. Fellow D-III programs Johns Hopkins, St. Lawrence and Amherst finished 28th, 31st and 32nd, respectively.

Christopher Stadler's 72nd-place finish led the way for the Fords over the eight-kilometer course. The junior's time of 25 minutes, 10 seconds was the second-fastest result posted by a D-III runner in the race. Georgetown's Mark Dennis won the race in a time of 23:57.

Haverford's scoring runners all finished within a 44-second spread, by far the narrowest gap of the D-III teams in the event and bettered by only seven other scoring quintets in the field of 37 teams.

Running into the team's scoring places to join Stadler were Peter Kissin (90th, 25:22), Jordan Schilit (99th, 25:27), Avi Bregman (138th, 25:48) and Joel Christian (155th, 25:54). Teammates Brian Sokas and Ivo Milic-Strkalj finished 204th and 208th, respectively, in a field comprised of 332 runners.

The Fords head to Princeton, N.J., for their next outing on Oct. 13 at the Princeton Invitational.