Despite scorching temperatures, Penn cross country was ready to bring the heat at the Paul Short Invitational.
The Open Men’s 8-kilometer race featured three Quakers, all making their 8K debuts. After an impressive appearance on the grass at the Main Line Invitational just two weeks prior, freshman Brody Watt held his own, clocking 25:37.9, to take 27th place in a field of more than 500 runners.
The Penn women made a statement in the Open Women’s 6K with five runners in the top 50 finishers and three in the top 15. Freshman Emily Reid led the charge, staying in sixth place for most of the race and never wavering from the top pack. In the third mile, she hit her stride, taking the lead and never looking back.
Reid then pulled away to take her first collegiate victory with a scorching time of 21:08.6, a full seven seconds better than the second-place finisher.
“I didn’t expect to win going into it,” Reid said. “I just really wanted to stay focused and stay present on the race I was running and not really focus on anyone else around me. I kind of worked on just staying in the pack of runners, and then towards the end, the pack had dwindled, and it was just me and one other competitor. And then it was only in the final stretch of the race that I took the lead.”
“It was really fun,” Reid added.
Freshman Lily Lyons and sophomore Alexa Matora followed close behind in 11th and 13th, respectively. Lyons stopped the clock at 22:03.0, while Matora crossed the line in 22:05.9.
The Penn men also showed out in the Men’s College Gold 8K. After winning his collegiate debut a month ago at the Friar Invitational, freshman talent Nick Mazzeo picked up right back where he left off.
In the first two miles, the Penn Valley, Pa. native stuck with the top runners, sitting comfortably in 15th place. In the third mile, Mazzeo made his move, passing 11 men to cruise into fourth place by the start of the fourth mile. The freshman entered the top three after putting a three-second gap between himself and the eventual fourth-place finisher in the final kilometer.
“It went out very fast because there’s a ton of people on the line, and it gets pretty narrow pretty fast,” Mazzeo said. “Kind of ended up a little about where I wanted to be during the beginning, but then [I] had to catch up a little bit in the second mile. Then the pack slowed down a little bit in the part where it gets hilly, so I could catch up a little bit … I was able to hang on until like the last 400 maybe, and then I just kind of couldn’t stick with the faster guys.”
Junior Chris Larnard also finished inside the top 50, securing 35th overall in 24:48.6 in his first-ever 8K race. Several other runners put up strong performances — junior Joseph Ruiz and senior George Keen finished 53rd and 65th, notching times of 25:01.5 and 25:13.6, respectively. Sophomore Vinay Raman, senior Kofi Fordjour, and sophomore Liam Jordan rounded out Penn’s top seven, all of whom finished in the top 100 of the 300 finishers.
In the hottest race of the day, the Penn women stepped up for the strongest team performance of the meet. To round off Penn’s phenomenal performance, the Quakers finished in second place as a team in the Women’s College Gold 6K.
Freshman Allison Lee was the Quakers’ low stick, clocking an impressive time of 20:25.5. Lee, who was also Penn’s top scorer at the Friar Invitational, stayed remarkably consistent throughout the race, crossing every mile checkpoint in fifth place. Over time, she built up an astonishing 16-second gap between herself and the sixth-place finisher.
“I think the [Friar Invitational] was kind of more of a rust buster,” Lee said. “I haven’t really been at that intensity for a long time, so it was definitely good to just get some experience there. But with this race, I think it was a lot more strategic, and we definitely were going into it with a lot more team goals. So I think definitely stakes are higher, but that also makes it a lot more enjoyable and more fulfilling, so it was fun.”
The Quakers also logged four other runners in the top 50. The remaining women were paced by sophomore Izzy Rodriguez, who finished 14th and registered a time of 21:05.1 for a new personal record. Junior Quin Stovall, senior Sarah Fischer, and senior Kelly Murray rounded out the scoring positions, finishing in 32nd, 45th, and 48th place, respectively.
To round off the roster of seven top-100 Quaker finishes, juniors L’Mio Edwards and Kate Hos crossed the line within a second of each other, finishing back-to-back in 75th and 76th. Although the Quakers finished tied in the standings with Yale, Penn’s higher-ranking set of top-five finishers served as the tiebreaker to deliver one final highlight for the Red and Blue at Lehigh.
Next up, the Quakers will take a trip to Terre Haute, Ind., on Oct. 16 for the Pre-National Invitational.
