MXC heads to Metropolitan Championships Friday
10/9/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - The Seton Hall men's cross country team resumes its fall slate on Friday when the Pirates travel to the famed Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx to take on the top teams in the region at the Metropolitan Championships.
The Mets not only represent the mid-point in the season but also serve as the first of four championship meets on the schedule and a significant measuring stick for an improving Seton Hall squad.
A season ago, The Hall registered an eighth-place finish on the men's side as NYU took the team title with an impressive cumulative score of 24. Four of the five Pirates that scored last fall are eligible to toe the line on Friday as head coach John Moon's group will look to use the combination of experience and talented newcomers to climb the team rankings.
Sophomores Sean Kip (Union, N.J.) and Cameron Quisenberry (Owensboro, Ky.) led the way in last year's trip to the 8K Metropolitan Championships but with the resurgence of John and Kevin Walsh (Deltaville, Va.) and an influx of new talent, kip and Quisenberry have combined for only one scoring time to this point in 2014. Despite the shift in primary scorers, the Pirates have still collected three top-two finishes in four outings and there has been no shortage of internal competition to crack the team's top-five.
Sophomore Victor Ricci (Narragansett, R.I.) and junior Ryan Flannery (Forked River, N.J.) were two of the team's most consistent forces in 2013 and the duo re-emerged as influential figures driving the Pirates' ascendancy in the blue & white's most recent outing - the 8K Asics Embry-Riddle Classic on September 27. Ricci paced the squad for the sixth time in his career while Flannery returned to the scoring group after turning in a scoring time in eight out of nine races he entered as a sophomore.
With two 8K races already in the books however, four of the five fastest marks the team has recorded at the distance belong to runners who did not score last fall. John and Kevin Walsh rank third and second respectively while freshmen Jake Simon (Freehold, N.J.) and Jeff Larson (Yucca Valley, Calif.) took advantage of a favorable Delaware Invitational course in their 8K debuts, finishing first and fourth on the squad.
Simon led the team in its first 8K race of the campaign (Delaware Invitational) while Kevin Walsh posted two team-leading times to open the year.
Kip owns the fifth-fastest 8K time that The Hall has posted during the 2014 season but with eight different team members who have contributed scoring times and a host more that have nearly cracked the Seton Hall top-five on several occasions, those figures could be in jeopardy on Friday.
The Pirates made two trips to Van Cortlandt Park last fall, closing the year in the Bronx at the IC4A Championships meaning that a large portion of the roster will carry a level of familiarity into Friday's event despite the team's relative youth. The Metropolitan Championships are hosted by Fordham and will be held on Friday, October 10 with start-time scheduled for 2:00 p.m.
