The Eagles men’s and women’s cross country teams both finished their 2024 regular season with several individual successes building towards high postseason expectations.
Both teams competed in 5 races in the regular season, traveling as far as Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the elite Roy Griak Invitational on Sept. 20. The season officially began on Aug. 31 at the Spider Alumni Open in Mechanicsville, Virginia.
The American men’s team came in second place with a team score of 67 at the Spider Alumni Open. Team scores are calculated by adding the number order that each runner places in during the race. Junior Carver Morgan opened the year with the fastest time for AU, scoring ninth overall with a time of 18:36.0 for the 6K race. Juniors Kaden Kluth and Cooper Michaud, as well as sophomore Mathias Deldicque, finished within the top 20 finishers to help lower the Eagles’ overall team score to secure second place.
For the women’s team, senior Lucia Ianello led with a time of 14:48.7, placing 29th overall and fastest on American’s women's team. Overall, the Eagles came in sixth with a score of 176, with the powerhouse University of Virginia runners dominating the top 20, ranking #1 for both programs.
Both teams saw more success on Sept. 6 at the Lafayette XC Invitational meet, with several standout top 20 performances from the men’s team helping them secure first place. Kluth claimed the title of champion of the race for the first time in his collegiate career with his impressive personal record time of 18:11.3 in the 6K, where he led the pack.
The Eagles women’s team expanded on their previous distance to run the 5K, but were not daunted with Ianello again leading the women’s team in the 5K with a personal best of 18:25.4. Graduate student June Mwaniki joined Ianello in the top 20, propelling the team to place in third overall among the competitors.
Competitors in the Lafayette Invite featured many Patriot League competitors that the Eagles will race against in the upcoming championship men’s 8K and women’s 6K races. Lafayette College will host the championships on Nov. 2.
“The regular season is really just preparation for championship season, right?” Assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Zachary Prescott said. Part of this preparation was balancing different course terrains and race lengths during the regular season schedule.
“We’ve kind of picked courses that are going to have similarities to Lafayette,” Prescott said.
The hilly Roy Griak Invitational course was just that. Both teams increased the distances in this race with the men’s running an 8K and being led again by Kluth, and the women’s running the 6K with Mwaniki leading with the longer distance.
“It’s probably the hardest course we’ll run all year,” Prescott said. “The last two have been relatively flat on both sides. So, opportunities for faster times to kind of get some confidence, get those [personal bests] in.”
American achieved several personal bests in the last two races of the regular season, with 12 out of the 14 men’s runners getting a personal record in the 8K at the East Carolina Invitational Pirate Invitational on Oct. 4, and 7 of the 12 women’s runners achieving personal records in the 6K at the ECAC Championship on Oct. 18.
At ECU, the men’s team finished in third place with Kluth and Morgan both finishing in the top-10. The women had a smaller squad for the trip to North Carolina, and the team came in 16th.
Several individuals on the women’s team improved in the ECAC Championships, such as junior Sophia Staiger stepping up to come in second among the Eagles runners. The men, however, fell behind to sixth place in their counterpart race, the IC4A Championships.
“On the men’s side, we’ve got a really young team with them. We don’t have any seniors in our top five right now,” Prescott said. On goals for the playoffs, he said “The distance guys really are stepping up and expected to score really, really well, we’ve got a high ceiling scoring wise with them.”
The American men's team finished in sixth place at the Patriot League Championships in the 2023 season. The team has not won the conference championships since 2006, with Navy and Army West Point dominating first place in the past 17 seasons.
“I think the story of things on the women’s side has been each race we’ve had a few bright spots, and then a few kind of setbacks amongst individual runners. So it’s really highlighted how cross country is a team sport,” Prescott said. “We haven’t really had a race where, in my opinion, we’ve put together the pieces 100 percent. So I think we’re hungry to do that in the championship season when it matters.”
The Eagles’ women’s 2023 cross-country team came in seventh place last year in the PL Championships, with their last first place championship win taking place in 2003. Both team’s last championship title also took place when the host course was at Lafayette College.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will run the PL Championships on Nov. 2 at Lafayette in Easton, Pennsylvania. Depending on the results, American could advance to the NCAA Regional Championships on Nov. 15 in State College, Pennsylvania.
This article was edited by Connor Sturniolo, Delaney Hoke and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Emma Brown, Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Nicole Kariuki.
