September 21, 2002

The MIT Men's Cross Country team traveled to Northfield, MN to race in the St. Olaf Invitational and get a preview of the NCAA Championship course. Spurred on by the local fans and friends, Ben Schmeckpeper, from Wisconsin, and Steve Maltas, from Illinois, ran personal bests and led MIT to a 3rd place finish behind 3rd ranked North Central and 20th ranked UW Steven's Point, but ahead of 17th ranked Washington University out of St. Louis and 18th ranked UW Platteville.

The many turns, tall grass and hilly latter part of the course led to somewhat slow times despite the excellent competition. The 230+ runners ran hard at the start, fearing the narrow course less than a half mile into the course and the MIT runners got caught up in it as well, running the first mile in 4:56 for Schmeckpeper and Sean Nolan. North Central ran a better paced race, taking over after the 2nd mile and running away with a low score of 27 points.

After three miles, Nolan began to fade a bit, but Maltas continued to move up, at least until he got a rather large rock stuck between his spikes that would not come loose for over a mile. Brian Anderson, again starting very fast, faded a lot in the 3rd and 4th miles. Carlos Renjifo, Craig Wildman and Albert Liu worked well through the crowds, gradually moving up in the middle miles. Freshmen Eric Khatchadourian and David Gray ran very well but were in the back of the top third of the field.

The final mile, mostly downhill until the finish, saw Schmeckpeper finish well, placing 3rd with a 25:45 and having too much left. Nolan placed 10th but paid the price for not sleeping Thursday night due to academic work, finishing behind Schmeckpeper for the first time. Maltas also finished strong, placing 14th, only :28 behind Schmeckpeper to provide MIT with a good 1-2-3 punch. The difference between Steven's Point and MIT was the 4th and 5th men. Steven's Point placed 17th and 24th while MIT placed 35th (Anderson) and 36th (Renjifo), exposing the :51 gap between their 3rd and 4th men.

MIT is not nationally ranked and based on the spread between the top 5 runners, will not likely move into the nations top 20. Next week, MIT gets a chance to improve against some of the best teams in the New England Region at the Codfish Bowl at Franklin Park. After winning the Codfish Bowl in 1998 and 1999, the Engineers have finished 2nd the past two years.