BRUNSWICK, ME – Saint Joseph's placed 46th with 1370 team points in the 2011 NCAA DIII New England 8K Men's Cross Country Championship on Saturday. Faisal Abdillahi '14 (Lewiston, Maine) paced the Monks with a 28:21.37 effort and finished 192nd overall.

Williams College won the regional championship with 88 team points, just one point ahead of runner-up Middlebury College. Host Bowdoin College placed third with 160 points, while Bates College (161) and Tufts University (175) rounded out the top five competing institutions.

Williams, ranked seventh in the country and winners of four of the last six New England Championships, earns a berth into the NCAA DIII National Championship, which takes place at Wisconsin-Oshkosh next Saturday, with the victory. As the runner-up, Middlebury also qualified to compete in the national championship.

Middlebury senior Michael Schmidt paced the pack of 322 runners with a 24:39.95 effort to collect top individual honors for the second consecutive season. His 2011 time was over a minute faster than last season's winning effort and 25 ticks faster than the time posted by 2011 runner-up Coby Horowitz, a sophomore from Bowdoin.

Tufts junior Matt Rand (24:58.19), Bridgewater State junior Stephen Wahome (25:00.89) and New England College sophomore Antoine Gisore (25:00.93) round out the top five individual performances.

For Saint Joseph's, Andrew Mockler '12 (Saco, Maine) placed 258th (29:56), Matt Boucher '15 (Augusta, Maine) was 290th (31:18), Jeff Merrill '15 (Fitchburg, Mass.) finished 319th (34:42), and Robert Travers '15 (Lebanon, Maine) placed 322nd (47:11.29)

The regional race marks the end of the 2011 campaign for Saint Joseph's College.