Seton Hall University
Hofstra/St. John's Fall Festival
MXC Second at St. John's/Hofstra Fall Festival
9/7/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Cross Country
OAKDALE, N.Y. - A second consecutive team-leading performance from senior Kevin Walsh (Deltaville, Va.) helped the Seton Hall men's cross country team place second at Sunday's 5K St. John's/Hofstra Fall Festival in what was the squad's second outing of the 2014 season.
Walsh's effort paced the team on a day in which the Pirates finished with 38 points, coming within two points of making it a clean Seton Hall sweep after The Hall claimed the title on the women's side.
Hosts Hofstra edged Seton Hall out on the men's side with a collective 36 points.
Walsh opened his final campaign with his first-ever team-leading effort at the Monmouth XC Kickoff and came out on Sunday and produced a 5K time of 16:14.7 to take ninth place out of 87 male competitors.
Running stride for stride with Walsh at the front of the pack for The Hall was freshman Jake Simon (Freehold, N.J.) who crossed the line only two-tenths of a second later to claim 10th place. Simon has now begun his collegiate career with consecutive scoring efforts as has classmate Bryant Cordova (Elizabeth, N.J.) who closed out the scoring contingent with a 22nd-place time of 16:37.8.
Occupying the middle of the team's top-five were sophomores Victor Ricci (Narragansett, R.I.) and Sean Kip (Union, N.J.), two team leaders from a year ago. Ricci placed outside the squad's top-five finishers for the first time in his career last week at Monmouth but responded with a 16th-place effort (16:29.8). Kip crossed the line in 20th position, crossing the line with a time of 16:34.1.
Ricci has now amassed 10 scoring efforts in his career while Kip added a seventh to his individual tally.
The average time of Seton Hall's top-five finishers was just five second off the pace off the average pace of the scorers for Hofstra.
The impressive showing extended past those at the top of the lineup however as freshman Louis Bustamante (Hamburg, N.J.) (23rd, 16:39.1), sophomore Cameron Quisenberry (Owensboro, Ky.) (27th, 16:44.5), and senior John Walsh (Deltaville, Va.) (28th, 16:48.0) helped The Hall collect seven top-30 times for the second week in a row.
Seton Hall will return to action next weekend when the squad will travel to Newark, Del. for the Delaware Invitational. Start-time is slated for 10:00 a.m.
