WINCHESTER, Va. – Sophomore Isaac Wilson (Tylersburg, Pa./North Clarion) won an individual title at the Horner Harriet Invitational, hosted by Shenandoah University, leading the Baldwin Wallace University men's cross country team to a team title.
Shenandoah hosted the meet at the Kernstown Battlefield, which gave a historical aura and standpoint to the event with a bunch of the Civil War memorabilia and signs. The course also featured a significant hill at the starting line, which forced the runners to be smart right from the beginning and again going into the second loop of the course.
The men's team finished first out of 13 teams with 26 points, marking the first team title by either BW squad since the women won the Ohio Athletic Conference championship in 2009.
With both an individual and a team title already under wraps, the BW men approached the starting line for their 6k event, determined to feed off the energy and success from the women and sweep the meet. For the third straight meet, Wilson was the Yellow Jackets' top as he won his first career individual title with a time of 19:34.2, finishing 14.1 seconds ahead of the second place runner.
Freshman Josh Hickmott (Clay, N.Y./Liverpool) and senior Brady Jeffers (South Amherst/Firelands) finished in third and fourth place, respectively, crossing the finish line with times of 19:55.9 and 20:10.6, respectively. In seventh place was freshman Jose Reynoso (Painesville/Harvey) with a time of 20:13.2 while sophomore Nick Irwin (Westlake) rounded out the top five runners with an 11th place finish and a time of 20:25.2.
With a big meet in the All-Ohio Championships looming in just six days, Head Coach Joe Eby said that today's shorter races (5k for the women and 6k for the men) will mean that the runners shouldn't be as beat up for the next meet when they will compete against all the OAC teams and a lot of other schools that the Yellow Jackets recruit against.
BW will try to earn back-to-back team titles as the men's and women's cross country teams will run in the All-Ohio Championships, hosted by Cedarville University, at the Elvin R. King Cross Country Course in Cedarville on Friday, Sept. 29, at 2 p.m.
