Syracuse cross-country turns in strong performance in Boston

The Syracuse Orange cross-country teams made their annual trip to Boston for the Coast-to-Coast Challenge last Friday. The men came away with a second-place finish behind the Arkansas Razorbacks while the women finished 7th in an East regional preview.

Once again it was Amanda Vestri leading the Orange as she earned a 2nd-place finish covering the 5k course in 17:01. Syracuse’s next four finishers were bunched together which is good, but were almost one minute behind Vestri which isn’t great. Sage Brooks (36th in 17:57), Annie Boos (41st in 18:04), Savannah Roark (42nd in 18:05) and Abigail Spiers (43rd in 18:06) were the other Syracuse scorers. The Orange end up finishing behind regional foes UConn, Harvard, and Columbia this week but those are the teams they will need to surpass when regionals come around. North Carolina won the women’s meet.

For the men’s race, Arkansas had four of the top six finishers with Syracuse’s Joe Dragon (3rd in 24:09) and JP Trojan (4th in 24:12) breaking up the Hogs’ placement. Nathan Henderson (12th in 24:24), Aidan Tooker (17th in 24:42) and Brody Smith (22nd in 24:52) rounded out the Syracuse scoring. The Orange finished with 60 points behind Arkansas’ 39. The Razorbacks were ranked 6th in last week’s USTFCCA poll so this performance could get Syracuse into this week’s poll.

With almost three weeks until the next meet, Syracuse will hit their hardest training period. The Orange will be back in action on October 15th when they split squads to travel to Wisconsin and Penn State to compete in the last tune-up before the ACC Championships.