DORCHESTER, MA – Faisal Abdillahi '14 (Lewiston, Maine) placed 14th with a 28:49 time and Saint Joseph's finished 5th in the 17th Annual Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Championship at historic Franklin Park on Saturday afternoon.
For the Monks, Joe DiSalvo '15 (Derry, N.H.) finished 17th with a 28:58 time and Matt Boucher '15 (Augusta, Maine) raced to a 32nd place finish with a 30:12 performance. Andrew Mockler '12 (Saco, Maine) (43rd, 31:08), Jeff Merrill '15 (Fitchburg, Mass.) (67th, 43:03), and Robert Travers '15 (Lebanon, Maine) (100th, 47:43) also participated in the conference championship meet.
Boucher's time was the fastest of his young collegiate career while the 31:08 effort by Mockler was his best of the season by over three minutes.
With four runners in the top five and all five scorers in the top 10 overall, Johnson & Wales cruised to its second consecutive GNAC Championship, and seventh overall, with just 20 team points on the afternoon. JWU junior Jeff Hartman (Osseo, Minn.) was the first of four consecutive Wildcats to cross the finish line and collected top individual honors with a 26:31 effort.
Norwich University placed a distant second with 55 points, Emerson College was third with 80, and Emmanuel College finished fourth with 85 points. Saint Joseph's College (141), Lasell College (158), Anna Maria College (178), Mount Ida College (251) and Albertus Magnus College (270) rounded out the field of participating institutions.
St. Joe's will compete in the ECAC Championship in Williamstown, Massachusetts on Saturday at 12:00 PM.
GNAC RELEASE:
On the men's side, the perennial powerhouse Wildcats cruised to their 4th-straight and 7th overall GNAC team championship. The first four runners to cross the finish line represented Johnson & Wales and the Wildcats placed their first five in the top-ten for a 20 point team total. Norwich University finished in second place with 55 points, while Emerson College snagged 3rd place with 80 points.
JWU junior Jeff Hartman (Osseo, Minn.) was named the 2011 GNAC Runner of the Year after pacing the field of 100 male runners with his 8k time of 26:31. Sophomore Brian Dinan (Geneva, N.Y.) captured 2nd place with a time of 27:03. Junior Greg Redfield, who was the 2009 GNAC individual champion, crossed the line just three seconds after Dinan to lock up 3rd place. JWU senior Nathan Smith (Jamesberg, N.J.) nabbed 4th place with a time of 27:10.
Fifth place went to Norwich freshman Nate Deer (Kodiak, Alaska), who earned GNAC Rookie of the Year honors with his time of 27:59. Also earning GNAC All-Conference honors with their top-ten finishes were Emmanuel's Stephen Armstrong (Revere, Mass.), Norwich's Frank Fox (Birdsboro, Pa.), Emerson's Kyle Oppenheimer (Kingston, N.H.), Norwich's David Rosenthal (Pasadena, Md.) and JWU's David Tores (Ann Arbor, Mich.). Johnson & Wales University Head Coach Thomas Spann was voted the 2011 GNAC Men's Cross Country Coach of the Year.
