NEW GLOUCESTER, Maine -- The No. 22 nationally ranked Bates men's cross country team won its second straight Maine State Meet and its fifth in the past seven years on Saturday, edging No. 26 Colby with five top-eight individual finishes.

Bates, ranked No. 2 in the East Region, scored 26 points for first place. Colby, ranked third in the East, followed in second place with 38 points. Bowdoin, seventh in the East, was third with 95 points, and Southern Maine, ninth in the region, was fourth with 112.

Rounding out the team scoring were Husson (167), University of New England (181), UMaine-Farmington (184), Thomas (249), Maine Maritime (255), Saint Joseph's (264) and UMaine-Presque Isle (316).

Colby's Tyler Morris and Ben Mellor finished 1-2 individually, with Morris winning his second straight Maine State individual title by setting the 8-kilometer men's course record at Pineland Farms with his time of 24:48.6, a 4:59.4 pace.

But Bates swept the next four spots in the order and completed its scoring with the overall eighth-place finisher out of 127 runners.

Senior Jackson Donahue (Princeton, N.J.) led the Bobcats for the third time in as many meets this season, finishing third overall and a hair behind Mellor with an identical time of 25:58.6. Junior Eli Boesch Dining (Concord, N.H.) placed fourth overall in 26:05.8, followed by sophomore Samuel Kartsonis (Harriton, Pa.) in fifth (26:12.9), junior Ryan Smith (Westport, Conn.) in sixth (26:13.9), and senior Bart Rust (Croton on Hudson, N.Y.) in eighth (26:17.3). For their top-seven finishes, Donahue, Boesch Dining, Kartsonis and Smith all took home All-State honors: the second in Boesch Dining's career.

Senior John Mieszczanski (Chelmsford, Mass.) finished 13th overall (26:38) and sophomore Ned Farrington (Cohasset, Mass.) placed 17th (26:46.4) as Bates' two scoring displacers.

Bates will next race at the St. Joe's Invitational on Oct. 9 at 12pm.