After taking last weekend off, Dage Minors and his Franklin Pierce University Men's Cross Country teammates were less than impressive as they placed just one runner in the top-100 of a 221-athlete field at the NEICAAA Championships at Franklin Park.
Senior B.J. Smith led the way for Franklin Pierce in 53rd place, as the team would finish 21st out of 34 teams from across New England representing all three NCAA divisions. Among Division II teams, Franklin Pierce were fourth, trailing fellow Northeast-10 Conference members American International, Stonehill and Bentley.
Smith checked in with an 8k time of 25.52.2, which was nearly 20 seconds off his time at the same event a year ago, which would set the tone for Franklin Pierce on the day. After Smith in 53rd, it was over another 50 spots back to the next Franklin Pierce runner, as freshman Aidan Gilbride placed 107th, with a time of 26:37.2.
Franklin Pierce would not even place all of its scoring five in the top 150, as senior Minors followed in 137th clocking 26:55.6, senior Jon Holmes was 139th recording a time of 26:56.4 and freshman Jeff Reddy finished in 152nd clocking 27:05.0.
Minors' time was over a minute off his time from the event last year, while Holmes was the lone scoring Franklin Pierce runner to improve on his NEICAAA Championship time from last year -- though he had finished outside the top 200 in 2015.
It all added up to 588 points and a disappointing 21st-place finish for Franklin Pierce, who took 17th last year and 14th in 2014.
Up front, Northeastern (102 points) claimed the New England title by 11 points over Brown (113 points). MIT (133 points) in third.
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