Cross Country Men Finish 21st at NCAA Division III Championships
11/19/06

The men's cross country completed their season with an impressive 21st place out of 32 teams at the NCAA Division III Championship (8k) hosted by Wilmington College in West Chester, Ohio. It was the first ever appearance for the men's team at the NCAA Championship meet, and the Lynx harriers entered the meet as the 32nd ranked team. On their way to finishing 21st, the Rhodes men defeated the 8th, 12th, and 13th ranked teams in the country and finished as both the top team from the South/Southeast region and SCAC.

Individually, three Lynx runners placed in the top 100 as Alex Mahoney (Jr.) (Winnetka, IL/New Trier), Nick Lewis (Jr.) (Gaylord, MI), and Mark Handelman (So.) (Bethesda, MD/Whitman) finished 49th, 87th, and 99th, respectively. Mahoney, the South/Southeast Regional individual champion, was again the top runner from the region in 28:03 while Lewis (28:25) and Handelman (28:31) kept the 1-3 scoring gap very close. Senior Co-Captains Will Sheftall (Thomasville, GA/Brookwood) and Scott Barrows (San Antonio/St. Mary's Hall) were the 4th and 5th scorers for Rhodes, placing 216th (29:46) and 221st (29:52). Junior Dave Huntzinger (Tallahassee, FL/Maclay) and Sophomore Lucas Warth (Ames, IA) rounded out the top 7 for the men in 240th (30:12) and 262nd (30:45). The race was won by Macharia Yuot of Widener University in 26:31.

Extremely muddy conditions and several portions of standing water on the course truly exemplified the nature of cross country, but the Lynx were not deterred as they ran intelligently and aggressively over the treacherous terrain. The national ranking of 21st marks the highest ever by a men's or women's cross country team at Rhodes.

Results