Centennial Conference Championship Central
Live Results | Live Video | Digital Program | Course Preview Video
HAVERFORD, Pa. – The No. 15 ranked Haverford College men's cross country team will look to chase down its third consecutive Centennial Conference Championship as Haverford hosts the championship meet on Saturday at the Alumni Cross Country Course. A win for Haverford would be the 21st title in 24 seasons for Tom Donnelly's squad, which has controlled the conference landscape.
Last season, the Haverford harriers took to the Greenspring Course on the campus of Stevenson University for the championship meet, which was hosted by Johns Hopkins. Haverford took the title behind a back-to-back individual championship from Charlie Marquardt '16, who was named Centennial Runner of the Year by virtue of the win in the race.
This season, the Haverford men have again maintained a national ranking throughout the fall, reaching No. 15 in the latest poll release after being picked as No. 16 in the initial National Preseason Poll. The Fords are slotted as the second team in the Mideast regional poll, behind Carnegie Mellon but ahead of conference foes Johns Hopkins (third) and Dickinson (fourth).
Success at the conference championship race will likely be contingent on outpacing the regionally-ranked Blue Jay and Red Devil squads who will come to Haverford looking for an upset ahead of Regionals. Dickinson (2008, 2009) and Johns Hopkins (2013) are the only other teams to win the team title with Haverford never finishing lower than third in the championship.
Junior Henry Woods has been the top runner for Haverford this season, pacing the team at the Main Line Invitational with a time of 20:02.5 in the four-miler before a career-best 24:59 time in the Paul Short Invitational, capturing 15th place overall against a loaded field of competition from across the NCAA's three divisions. Woods eclipsed the time in the Rowan Border Clash, crossing in 24:13.9 to again lead the Fords to a fourth place finish.
The potential conference scorers for Haverford emerged again at the Rowan race, with senior co-captains Jimmy Gorman and Charlie Hale joining sophomores Ryan Herlihy, Greg Morgan, Graham Peet and Dylan Gearinger to compose a nationally formidable top seven.
Herlihy (24.22.7), Morgan (24:37.5), Peet (24:46.3) and Gearinger (24:51.3) and Hale (24:55) all posted career-bests for a squad peaking at the right time. A tight pack with a spread of less than 50 seconds separating the first through fifth runners on the team helped Haverford climb the standings throughout the race in Glassboro, N.J.
Home-course advantage should help the squad, which has won 20 of the Centennial Conference's 23 cross country championships. The Fords have won 18 individual titles in the history of the conference meet including the last six titles. Haverford last hosted the event in 2014.
The men's race will take place at noon on Saturday while the women's race will start at 11 a.m. The men's and women's races will both be streamed live via CentennialConference.TV and live results will be avaliable via Motion Timing. Links are avaliable at the top of this release and on the cross country schedule pages. Fans are encouraged to follow @CentennialConf on Twitter and Instagram for raceday coverage, including expanded live segments courtesy of Facebook Live. A digital race program also will be made avaliable via the Centennial Conference website.
After the conference race, the men's cross country team will participate in the NCAA Mideast Regional in Center Valley, Pa. on Nov. 12. DeSales will host the contest. The NCAA Championships are the following week (Nov. 19) in Louisville, Ky., hosted by Spalding University and the Louisville Sports Commission.