Jordan Karnes
Contributing Writer
The Springfield College men’s and women’s cross country teams traveled to Dartmouth, Mass. last Saturday were both to compete in the UMass Dartmouth Cross Country Invitational.
Coming off a second-place finish out of 10 at the Smith Invitational the prior Saturday, the men had much promise heading into Dartmouth. With a sixth-place finish out of 14 teams at the Smith invitational, the women also had some unfinished business going into Dartmouth.
Standing out for the men on their way to finishing second out of 39 teams competing on Saturday was senior Anthony Salvucci. With another outstanding performance, Salvucci duplicated his toughness from the prior Saturday by finishing second out of 293 runners.
Another top five finish by Springfield came by the feet of senior Zach Pietras, who finished in fourth place overall with a time of 24:52.57.
The women completed the invitational with an overall 13th place finish out of 38 teams that competed. Leading the women was junior Gabby Gaudreault, as she finished with a time of 19:21.74, good enough for 35th out of the 293 total runners. Also coming out on top for the women was freshman Abby Wright who finished 58th overall for the Pride.
“Gabby Gaudreault, Abby Wright and Sarah Knop all stood out and ran excellent times on the course.” said coach Pennington.
“Elizabeth Tomaino improved over two minutes on the UMass course from 2011 when she ran there as a freshman,” said Pennington.
With two great performances shown by both the men and women respectively, both teams will be back in action as they travel to Williamstown, Mass. next weekend to compete in the Purple Valley Classic.