Slippery Rock University hosted The Rock Pre-Nationals at their home course at Bob O’Connor Golf Course at Schenley Park in Pittsburgh. The Green and White runners placed 24th out of 32 NCAA Division II school from a total of ten states.
The race served as a prelude to the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional Championships and the NCAA Division II National Championships that will take place Nov. 17 and Dec. 1, respectively.
The third-ranked team in the nation, the Colorado School of Mines, would take home first place with an impressive performance finishing with only 19 points after placing all five scorers in the top eight and filling the top three spots. In second place, Mount Oliver and Queens tied with 119 points. Cedarville followed in fourth with 158 points and Malone finished fifth with 164 points. Charleston was the top Atlantic Region team with 206 points and finished in eighth place. Edinboro led the PSAC schools in ninth place with 274 points. Slippery Rock went on to finish with 630 points in 24th place.
A total of 303 individual runners completed the 8,000-meter course and 29 teams recorded a score.
Senior Josh Rader once again led Rock runners in 113th place in 27:36. Redshirt Sophomore John Marenkovic would follow in 138th place in 27:59.
Senior Andrew Maxwell finished in 146th in 28:03 followed by freshman Noah Yake in 191st in 28:43 and junior Trenton Yoder in 218th with a time of 29:16 and would round out SRU point scorers.
Junior Daniel Janyska finished 222nd in 29:20 and sophomore Tim Ferguson was the seventh SRU runner to cross the finish line in a time of 29:27 in 231st place.
Slippery Rock will be off next week and will be back in action Nov. 3 for the PSAC Championships at Edinboro University.
