The men’s cross country team earned second place at the New England D-III Championship this weekend, the team’s best outcome since 2006. Juniors Coby Horowitz and Sam Seekins finished in first and second place respectively, the first one-two finish the Polar Bears have seen in the tournament.
At the 4.6 mile mark, Horowitz and Seekins surged ahead of the lead pack of runners, with just one runner from Middlebury managing to stay alongside them.
Horowitz was able to maintain a slight lead for the last 200 meters of the race.
“Coby’s got the best intuition for how to play out a race,” said Head Coach Peter Slovenski. “He ran with the lead pack in the third and fourth miles, but he had a lot of influence on how they ran those miles to set up when he wanted to kick. It was a fantastic kick, because the Middlebury runner is a very fast 800 runner, and the race set him up for his great finish too.”
Seekins ran neck-and-neck with the Middlebury runner until the very last 20 meters of the race, when he pulled ahead into second place. All three runners crossed the finish line within the same second.
According to Slovenski, Seekins has made amazing improvements this season in his running technique how he ends his races.
“He was always as strong as a horse, but now he’s got more sprint speed,” Slovenski said.
Because of the second place finish, the Polar Bears earned an automatic bid to the NCAA D-III Cross Country Championship this weekend.
“The New England region is really stacked this year,” said Slovenski. “To have our top runners win the race, and to have our number five runner finish only 61 seconds later was a great team performance. These guys work so well together, and they never quit.”