Personal best times not enough for X-Country at Paul Short

The Penn men's cross country team placed 12th in a very fast race. Elation proved short-lived on Saturday after the members of the Penn men's cross-country team finished the Paul Short Invitational in Bethlehem, Pa. Six of the seven Quakers runners finished the race with their fastest times ever, as four of them broke the 25 minute mark. The team had run its best race of the year, and they were proud of it. Then the the results came in. Despite its impressive effort, Penn was only able to manage a 12th place finish. National and regional powers alike had gotten the best of the Quakers. "We were not disappointed in our performance at all. I just think we were all a little shocked by how fast everybody [the rest of the field] ran," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. The Quakers had good reason to be shocked. Junior Sean MacMillan once again led the Red and Blue with a personal record of 24:20.48. Last year, the time would have catapulted him to the very head of the field. This year, however, MacMillan earned only 20th place in a field of nearly 300 runners. "Five guys broke the course record. Before Saturday, my time would have been the fourth best ever on that course," MacMillan said. Leading the field of record breakers was Todd Snyder of Michigan who clocked in at 23:44.15. Michigan and Michigan State tied for the win with both teams amassing only 90 points. Two of Penn's rival squads, Princeton and Navy, continue to excel as well. They took fifth and sixth, respectively. Following MacMillan, junior captain Scott Clayton finished 46th in 24:40.79. Sophomore Bryan Kovalsky (24:51.77) edged out junior Mark Granshaw (24:53.65) with the two finishing 61st and 67th, respectively. Junior Jason Greene and freshman Matt Gioffre rounded out the list of Quakers to run the fastest races of their lives by finishing within a second of one another at 25:08.52 and 25:08.74, respectively. "It was just perfect. You had everything. It was about 50 degrees. It was overcast. That's part of the reason why everybody was so fast," Powell said. The pace on Saturday was consistently fast. The Quakers needed to log the year's best times just to keep with the pack. An astounding five runners were able to negotiate the five-mile course in under 24 minutes. "It wasn't like it was a crazy pace from the start," Clayton said. "It just began at a four and a half minute pace and stayed there." Penn held its own against the competition on Saturday. Ivy rival Brown surprised the Quakers, but only narrowly defeated them by a tally of 255 to 280. Just ahead of the Bears were West Virginia and Mount St. Mary's, both Mid-Atlantic region powers. The race was so large and so tightly-packed in the front that an improvement of mere seconds would have significantly changed the Quakers' final result. "A funny thing about this race is that two or three guys could have moved up a bunch of spaces if they had just run maybe two seconds faster," Powell said. Junior Mark Granshaw, for example, could have finished ahead of six more runners if he had improved his 24:53.65 by a mere two seconds. Although Penn was not able to shock the cross-country world on Saturday, the team was not outclassed by any means. They remain in a position where big things can happen come the league and regional championships. "Right now I'd say we're sixth or seventh in our region and around fourth in our league," Clayton said. "We can do better." This week the team will begin focusing on what Powell calls "sharpening." As a result, the road mileage will once again diminish as the squad hopes to freshen up its legs. "Anybody who's disappointed in Saturday is not focusing on the right things," Powell said. "People that are in the know in this sport realize that we're a dangerous group."

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