November 3, 2018
Harper captures eighth consecutive DIII national title
The Hawks were led by four top-10 finishes to claim their eighth consecutive national title
CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL | RESULTS | PHOTO GALLERY | ALL-AMERICANS
Westfield, MA – For the eighth consecutive year, Harper (IL) ran away with the NJCAA DIII Men's Cross Country National Championship. The Hawks scored a meet-low 38 points after placing four runners inside the top 10 on the 8k course at Stanley Park.
Sandhills' (NC) Daniel Taylor captured the individual championship with a time of 26:32.37, winning the meet by over 40 seconds. Thanks to Taylor's performance, Sandhills placed second overall at the championship with 83 points. Suffolk County (NY) finished third while Ocean County (NJ) and Kellogg (MI) rounded out the top five.
- Harper was led by Michael Sisko's fifth place finish with a time of 27:40.46.
- Tony Espinosa (6), Jacob Melgosa (7), Jeff Glatz (8), and Jack Casey (12) capped the scoring for the Hawks who have now won each of the last eight championships by an average of 42.8 points.
- The 38 points are the second lowest team score during the Hawks' unprecedented run behind the 2014 team who scored 28 points.
- Taylor's individual title comes one year after finishing as a runner-up at the 2017 national championship. The individual title is the first for the Sandhills program.
- Rowan-Gloucester's Mike Dowd finished in second place with a time of 27:18.47. Dowd's second-place finish is an improvement from his eighth-place finish in 2017.
- Suffolk County's third-place finish came on the heels of Jonathan Gonzalez's third-place individual finish at 27:22.14.
- A total of 162 runners competed in Saturday's national championship on a wet and rainy Stanley Park course.
- The top three team finishers (Harper, Sandhills, Suffolk County) were all ranked in the same order in the final USTFCCCA poll.
- The Harper men were joined by their female counterparts who won the national championship for the third consecutive year.
