WILLIAMSTOWN, MA – Saint Joseph's College placed 41st with 1,053 team points in the 2012 Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Men's Cross Country Championship on Saturday. Sophomore Joe DiSalvo (Derry, N.H.) led the Monks and placed 94th overall with a 28:57 performance.

Featuring three runners in the top five overall, Amherst College won the annual championship for the first time with 44 points, 10 better than runner-up Bates College. Williams College, the event host, saw its seven-year ECAC title run come to a close and finished in third place with 84 team points. Tufts University (88 points) and Middlebury College (163) rounded out the top five competing institutions in 43-team championship.

Tufts senior Sam Haney topped the 287-runner field with a 26:23 effort while Williams freshman Todd Ford was just three seconds behind and finished as the runner-up. Three Lord Jeffs runners followed, as senior Dillon Buckley (26:31), junior Gus Greenstein (26:43) and sophomore Romey Sklar (26:52) placed third, fourth and fifth, respectively, to help propel Amherst to the top finish.

For the Monks, freshman Andrew Caron (Gardiner, Maine) was 216th with a 32:09 time, first-year Mark McCarraher (Franklin, Mass.) finished in 250th place with a 33:08 effort, rookie Taidghe Hagan (Reading, Mass.) posted a 33:57 time and finished 260th, and freshman Billy Brooks (Cape Elizabeth, Maine) placed 275th after touring the 8K course in 36:05.

Saint Joseph's will compete in the NCAA DIII New England Regional Championship in Westfield, Massachusetts on Saturday, November 10th at 11:00 AM.