BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Yale men's cross country team competed at the Paul Short Run Friday morning at Lehigh's Goodman Campus. Among 40 teams in the 8K Gold Race, Yale took 11th place with 308 points – nine points behind tenth-place Pitt. No. 28 Georgetown (102 points) finished first. Harvard's Sam Burgess (23:18.6) was the top individual finisher, edging Georgetown's Birhanu Harriman by a second.
The race gave the Bulldogs their best chance yet to size up their Ivy League and Regional competition. The meet featured six Ivy League teams, including four of the top five from Heps last year. Among those Ivy teams, Yale finished second. Three of the top four in the latest USTFCCCA Northeast Region rankings were there – No. 1 Syracuse (ninth, 266 points), No. 2 Harvard (fourth, 147 points) and No. 4 Cornell (12th, 314 points). Yale, ranked No. 6 in the region, finished ahead of the Big Red by six points.
Last year at this race, Yale placed eighth out of 44 teams with 302 points.
Leo Brewer '25 was Yale's top finisher (42nd overall, 24:16.1). Among current Bulldogs, senior
Kenan Pala had the best finish a year ago (59th overall, 24:25).
The Bulldogs:
- Senior Owen Karas led the Bulldogs home with a 15th place finish (23:31.1). That was a 67 place improvement over his finish at this race a year ago (82nd, 24:37.9). This was Karas' first race of the season.
- Senior Kenan Pala (27th, 23:49.9) was Yale's second finisher. This marked the fifth time in his last six races that Pala has finished among the Bulldogs' top three.
- Junior Daegan Cutter (45th, 24:00.7) was Yale's third finisher. He moved up 36 spots over the race's final 3K.
- Senior Braden King (114th, 24:36.7), Yale's captain, led a trio of Bulldogs that rounded out Yale's top five. That group also included junior Guy Stevens (118th, 24:37.8) and sophomore Lucas Cohen (125th, 24:39.3). This was Stevens' second career cross country race.
- Sophomore Matthew Schutzbank (177th, 25:02.0), junior Brian Gamble (183rd, 25:05.6) and sophomore Seb Sutch (202nd, 25:13.4) rounded out Yale's squad.
Notes:
- In the Open Men's 8K earlier in the day, sophomore Max Bishop finished 45th (24:59.4), first-year Magnus Manley finished 47th (25:01.1), senior Will Sheehy finished 59th (25:11.6), junior Jack Diaz finished 100th (25:29.2), senior Tanish Chettiar finished 133rd (25:44.2), junior Benny Seidman finished 166th (25:54.5), sophomore Connor Hom finished 197th (26:09.5), junior Amaré Fields finished 201st (26:10.5) and junior Liam Sullivan finished 273rd (26:43.3). The race had 575 finishers, with Princeton's Jackson Shorten finishing first (23:59.4).
Up Next:
- Yale will compete at Princeton's Fall Classic on Oct. 17.
