No. 12 Men’s Cross Country Takes 4th at DIII Pre-Nationals

TERRE HAUTE, Indiana — The No. 12 ranked MIT men's cross country team raced to a fourth-place finish under the lights on Friday evening at the 8k 2024 DIII Pre-Nationals meet, hosted by Rose-Hulman at the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.

THE BASICS:

Top-Five Team Scores: 1. Pomona-Pitzer (65); 2. Wis.-Whitewater (82); 3. George Fox (152); 4. MIT (172); 5. Washington U. (197)
Top Finisher: Wis.-Whitewater's Gunner Schlender in 24:08.97
Top MIT Finisher: Senior Sam Coutts (Pacific Grove, Calif.) in 24:48.89 (12th)

HOW IT HAPPENED:

Paced by Schlender, No. 3 Wis.-Whitewater placed three runners in the top-four but No. Pomona Pitzer finished with four runners in the top-24 to claim the team title.
Coutts posted a big collegiate PR of 24:48.89 to lead MIT with a 12th-place finish. Coutts' previous PR was 25:46.8 at the 2022 Conn. College Invitational.
Coutts, classmate Pablo Arroyo (Richardson, Texas), sophomore Yichen Sun (Chapel Hill, N.C.), first year Renne Cooper (Austin, Texas) and Jake Cobb (West Deptford, N.J.) combined for MIT's team score of 172. Arroyo was 24th in 25:06.09, Sun took 39th in 25:23.62, followed by Cooper in 50th with a time of 25:31.57, and Cobb in 52nd with a time of 25:33.06.
Senior Ziyad Hassan (Ashburn, Va.) paced the second wave of MIT runners, finishing in 73 with a time of 25:49.42.
First year Luke Rupert (Hill City, S.D.) and graduate student Jacob Hansen (Bountiful, Utah) each finished in the top-100. Rupert was 81st with a time of 25:54.22 and Hansen was 94th, finishing the course in 26:04.27.
First year Owen Sondag (Fargo, N.D.) and sophomore Jaxon Miller (Goshen, Ind.) crossed the line together in 105 and 106. Sondag recorded a time of 26:10.03 with Miller an instant behind in 26:10.79

INSIDE THE NUMBERS:

Coutts, Arroyo, Cooper, Cobb, Hassan and Rupert all recorded new collegiate PRs.
After pacing the field in his collegiate debut, Cooper was 50 in his second collegiate race but he dropped his 8k time by 12 seconds.
MIT claimed fourth in 2024 after winning the Pre-National meet in both 2022 and 2023.

UP NEXT:

The rest of the Engineers men's cross country team will compete tomorrow, Saturday, October 5, at the Bates Invitational in Lewiston, Maine. The team will reunite on Saturday, October 19 at the Connecticut College Invitational.

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