NEW YORK – The Yale men's cross country team opened the 2025 season at the Br. John "Paddy" Doyle Iona Meet of Champions Friday morning at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Competing among 11 teams in the Mick Byrne Men's Championship 5 mile, Yale took second place behind No. 19 Princeton. Both teams finished with 69 points, but the Tigers won the tiebreaker (head-to-head comparisons of each team's top five runners) 3-2.
The race gave the Bulldogs a chance to compete at the site of this year's Ivy League Heptagonal Championships, set for Oct. 31. It also gave them a chance to size up some of their Ivy League and Regional competition. Princeton has won the last four Ivy titles, while Columbia finished just one point behind the Bulldogs at last year's Ivy Championship. Three ranked teams from the Northeast Region competed Friday, with Yale (ranked No. 6 in the region) edging third-place Columbia (ranked No. 9 in the region) (77 pts.). Army (ranked No. 10 in the region) finished sixth (122 pts.).
The Bulldogs:
- Junior Daegan Cutter (fifth, 25:26.50) and senior Kenan Pala (seventh, 25:39.70) were Yale's top two finishers. This marked the fourth time in his last five races that Pala has finished among the Bulldogs' top three.
- Junior Guy Stevens made the most of his Yale cross country debut, finishing third on the team and 16th overall (25:56.7).
- Senior Alex Mader (20th, 26:04.7), sophomore Lucas Cohen (21st, 26:06.9), sophomore Seb Sutch (26th, 26:26.0) and junior Brian Gamble (29th, 26:32.9) were part of a pack of Bulldogs that claimed four of the 10 finishing spots from 20 through 29 overall. This was Mader's first cross country race since 2023, and Gamble's first since last year's season--opening win at Harvard.
- Junior Jack Diaz (47th, 27:21.3) and senior Will Sheehy (49th, 27:25.4) rounded out Yale's squad.
- Cutter and Pala were the lone returnees from Yale's 2024 NCAA Northeast Regional squad (which tied for the team's best Regional finish in 20 years) to compete on Friday.
Up Next:
- Yale will compete at Lehigh's Paul Short Run on Friday, Oct. 3.
