Cross Country teams compete at Middlebury

MIddlebury, VT - Vermont Tech competed on Saturday at the Aldrich invitational hosted by Middlebury College. The cross country team took the largest team in recent memory to compete with University of Vermont, Middlebury and Norwich University, as well as other large programs. 

The men's team took 8 men to the meet and finished 9th out of 11 teams. "For us it was about the training and experience of running in a larger meet" said Coach Dunkle. The VTC Team has a large freshman group this year so the chance to see what other schools are doing and how they compete is a great experience. Middlebury wom their home meet, and UVM was second, but against Green Mountain College, Southern Vermont College and Pauls Smith's College we held our own. The team trained through this meet, focusing on the James Earley meet in early October and YSCC Conference meet in mid October.  Still we gained ground on Paul Smith's from last week and overall the men looked strong, if not hot and a bit worn from the extreme heat.  Finishing top for the men was David Mattern Followed by Matt Kelly and Tyler Dunham. Also scoring for the VTC team were Nick Thornton and Max Mayr.  This week is an off week for the Knights and will see them training hard in preparations for the Vermont State meet in Lyndonville on Sept 29th. 

The women's team took 7 runners and ended up finishing 7th out of 9 colleges.  Dunkle was enthusiastic about the women's overall performance.  We had a couple of women who sat out this race because of injuries and the others stepped up and worked hard." We beat Southern Vermont and Paul Smiths which made a great day.  Masha Goodspeed was the star runner of the day, finishing 1st for the Knights followed by Emma Labadie and Jenna Jerome. Also scoring for the women's team were Olivia Machado and Sophie Provost. The women's team is looking pretty strong, much more so than coach Dunkle thought going into the season. "These young Women work really hard to get ready for racing. Some of them came into the season not having run before and already they are nipping at the heals of larger programs. They all impressed me today with their heart and determination on the trails."