Men's Cross Country Places First at Mason Invitational; Santana Wins Again

View Full Men's Results

LEESBURG, Va. - The La Salle men's cross country team took the top prize at the Mason Invitational on Saturday afternoon, riding first-place finisher Alfredo Santana to victory. Santana ran the 7800 meters in 24:52.2, finishing the race nearly 12 seconds ahead of the second-place runner.

"The strategy was to run the first part relatively easy then really work the later parts of the race," Santana said. "I ended up not really pushing until a mile to go and for this reason I felt that I could have run much harder."

"Alfredo had a very strong run today," head coach Dan Ireland said. "We wanted to win the race running a very controlled effort until the last 1k. He is running very well right now."

The Explorer men sent five to the finish line in the top 11 and eight in the top 20 in the 99-runner field.

Vince Perozze (25:12.4) finished third while Nick Ross (25:29.4) took sixth. Nico Greco (25:40.5) and Ian Barnhill (25:42.9) ended ninth and eleventh, respectively. A pack of Explorers crossed the finish line together, with Dan Day (26:09.0), Ben Pershall (26:09.8), and Michael Bowden (26:11.6) finishing 18th through 20th, respectively.

As a team, La Salle accumulated 28 total points on the day to earn the meet victory; George Mason, the second-place finisher, amassed 41 total points.

"The team did great," Santana said. "This is the toughest course we have run in a while and it served as a precursor to the toughness of the coursees we will run at the conference and regional meets, two of the meets we want the team to be most ready for this season."

"We made a statement that regardless of the advantages any team has we can compete and be tough," he added.

"The men competed very hard today over an extremely difficult course," Ireland said. "Our race plan was run conservative early and race hard over the last 4k. I was very pleased with how well the guys competed over the last mile."

"The experience that gained today on this tough hilly course should help us at Belmont for the A-10 Championships," he noted.

The Explorers hit the slopes again on Friday, October 12 when they travel to Madison, Wisc. for the Adidas Wisconsin Invitational.

Complete La Salle Men's Results

Alfredo Santana	1st of 99	24:54.2
Vince Perozze	3rd	25:12.4
Nick Ross	6th	25:29.4
Nico Greco	9th	25:40.5
Ian Barnhill	11th	25:42.9
Dan Day	18th	26:09.0
Ben Pershall	19th	26:09.8
Michael Bowden	20th	26:11.6
Ryan Topita	22nd	26:14.5
Achraf Khattabi	23rd	26:18.5
Jimmy Murphy	26th	26:26.3
John Pujols	40th	26:54.1
Zach Sullivan	43rd	27:00.3
Rodrigo Nunez	65th	27:53.8
Sean Mallon	77th	27:55.3
David Ozarowski	70th	28:16.8

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