Mideast Regional Hub
Haverford at the Regional Championships
Declared Entrants
HAVERFORD, Pa. - The No. 22 Haverford Men's Cross Country team heads to the NCAA Division III Mideast Regional Championship on Saturday afternoon. This year's regional championship is hosted by Centennial Conference foe Muhlenberg College, on the campus of Lehigh University. The men's 8K race is slated for an 11 a.m. start time, with the women's race slated for a noon opening.
The top two teams in each of Saturday's regional races will earn automatic qualification to the NCAA Division III Championships next weekend at Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Ky. In addition, individuals who have placed within the top seven runners not on those top two squads will earn an automatic berth to the championships. At-large bids for teams that do not receive an AQ will be announced in an NCAA.com press release on Sunday at approximately 1 p.m.
Haverford is the third-ranked team in the Mideast Regional rankings, behind just national No. 4 Carnegie Mellon and No. 6 Johns Hopkins and ahead of No. 32 Dickinson. Landmark champion Elizabethtown, CAC champion York, MAC champion Widener, Stevenson, Swarthmore, and Moravian round out the regional rankings heading into the championship meet.
Athletes from 59 schools will take to the course at Lehigh on Saturday. Each team is allowed to declare up to 10 runners, but may only select seven from that pool of 10 to compete in the meet. The 10 runners declared eligible for Haverford include Centennial Conference Rookie of the Year Ryan Kredell, who was Haverford's top finisher at the Centennial Conference meet at Gettysburg, taking a ninth-place overall finish. Senior co-captain Sam McCalpin is also among the declared entrants after a 10th place overall finish and a second-team All-Centennial Conference selection. Senior Conor Madden and sophomores Max Brelig and Peter Buckley are all expected to toe the starting line at Lehigh after scoring for the Fords in the conference championship. Senior co-captain Hiro Kawakatsu, senior David Watt, juniors Jack Hunter and Matt Katz, and first-year Aaron Bratt make up the remainder of Haverford's 10 declared entrants after representing Haverford at the Centennial meet two weeks ago.
The Fords will be looking to return to the national championships for a 27th consecutive season after earning automatic qualification a season ago with a second-place finish. Haverford has not finished outside the top five in a regional race since 1988, and has placed at least one runner in the regional top 10 every year since 1993. The program has established a dynastic pedigree of excellence in the postseason meets, with 23 team championships and 12 individual titles at the regional level.
The Tartans of Carnegie Mellon captured the region after upending the fourth-ranked Fords in 2018. Haverford then swiftly reversed that head-to-head result at nationals, as the squad placed fourth on a frigid late fall day in Winneconne, Wisc., returning to the podium for the first time since 2012. Carnegie Mellon finished 18th.
In addition to the team hardware available on Saturday, the top 35 runners in the field will be named All-Mideast Region. Last season, four Fords were named All-Region finishers as Ryan Herlihy, Graham Peet, and Greg Morgan all posted top 10 placements while McCalpin finished 16th. Live results from all of Saturday's action, as well as expanded meet information, will be available via the regional hub.