NEWVILLE, Pa. - The Haverford College men's cross country team qualified for the NCAA Division III Championship with its first place finish at the Mideast Regional at Big Spring High School hosted by Dickinson College on Saturday.
This will be Haverford's 23rd consecutive trip to the NCAA meet. The Fords have won 22 regional crowns, this one being the first since 2012. The team has also won four straight meets this season. Head coach Tom Donnelly's squad had 67 team points, 26 fewer than Elizabethtown, who will receive the other automatic qualifier.
Senior Charlie Marquardt won his second consecutive individual title at the regional race with a time of 25:14.8, nine seconds in front of Muhlenberg's Jaryd Flank. The senior is on an incredible run, having won the last four races he's entered and six of the last eight events.
All runners among the top 35 finishers are selected as all-region with the Fords having their top seven claim all-regional status. Those runners include Marquardt, junior
Jimmy Gorman (11th, 25:50.3), senior
Sam Fujimori (13th, 25:54.7), sophomore
Henry Woods (16th, 25:59.1), freshman
Graham Peet (26th, 26:05.5), seniors
Nicholas Gandolfo-Lucia (33rd, 26:13.7) and
Dylan Verner-Crist (35th, 26:19.8).
Haverford's average time (25:48.9) was eight seconds quicker than second place Elizabethtown. The defending regional champion Carnegie Mellon placed third with 98 points. Johns Hopkins was fourth, followed by Widener. Swarthmore (seventh) and Dickinson were the other Centennial Conference schools in the top ten.
The No. 7 nationally ranked Fords will run in the NCAA Championship next Saturday in Oshkosh, Wisc. Haverford has finished in the top ten in nine of the last 11 national meets, highlighted by the team's national championship in 2010.
