The Men's Cross Country Team took on RPI and WPI in the annual Engineer's Cup in a home meet at Franklin Park this past Saturday. With a strong team returning from last year, MIT expected an easy victory over the other Tech schools, and that is what they got, with a low score of 22 points to 39 for RPI and 76 for WPI.
MIT lead runners Mark Strauss '01, Mike Parkins '99, and Dan Feldman '02 took the first mile out in 4:55 to open up a 7 second lead, and that is as close as it ever got. Strauss took a wrong turn in the last mile, disqualifying him from the race and a near certain first place finish. A second group of MIT runners consisting of Frank Johnston '00, Ed Keehr '01, and Leif Seed '99, tried to break the top two RPI runners in hopes of running to a perfect score of 15 points, but were unable to put them away.
The RPI runners, who appeared broken after the 1st mile, were coming back. After the half-way point, one was catching up to Frank and Leif, and another was running right on Ed. By 3 1/2 miles 1 RPI runner had overtaken Leif and was moving on Frank. Three more Rensselaer harriers had moved past Ed and were about to overtake Leif. The third MIT group of Liyan Guo '01, Ray Molnar '00, and Jeff Billing '01, as well as Phil Loiselle '01, who had fallen back from the second group, were making a strong run at the RPI group trailing Leif.
A constant pace allowed the top two RPI runners to pass Frank in the last mile and earn 3th and 4th places. A strong last mile and a half by Ed caught 2 of the 4 RPI runners and place him just behind Frank for 6th place. Leif and Liyan had fine kicks to pass the 4th RPI runner to garner 8th and 9th places to round out MIT's top 6.
Next week, MIT hosts very strong teams from Bates and Tufts at Franklin Park. Tufts is ranked in the top 10 in the country.