MANCHESTER, Conn. -- The No. 25 nationally ranked Bates men's cross country team edged Amherst in a tiebreaker to take fifth place out of 11 teams Sunday at the NESCAC Championship, led by senior
Jackson Donahue's 14th-place individual finish.
Bates and Amherst both scored 141 points, trailing only first-place and No. 3 nationally ranked Williams (51), No. 14 Middlebury (59), No. 30 Colby (78) and No. 31 Tufts (121). The Bobcats claimed fifth place ahead of the Mammoths by outpacing them at three of five scoring positions: second, fourth, and fifth. In other words, Bates' second runner finished ahead of Amherst's second runner, as did Bates' fourth and fifth runners against their Amherst counterparts.
No. 24 Connecticut College trailed the Bobcats and Mammoths by 12 points (153) to settle for seventh place.
Bates had the lowest time spread among its scoring runners of any team in the race save for eighth-place Hamilton, with only 48 seconds separating Donahue (Princeton, N.J.) and Bates' fifth runner, senior
John Mieszczanski (Chelmsford, Mass.).
Donahue earned All-NESCAC honors for the first time, taking a place on the Second Team as one of the finishers between eighth and 14th place. He covered the 8-kilometer course at Wickham Park in 25:43.6, leading the Bobcats for the fifth time in as many races this season.
Junior
Eli Boesch Dining (Concord, N.H.) finished 23rd overall in 26:04.8, and was followed in team scoring by sophomore
Sam Kartsonis (Harriton, Pa.) in 31st place (26:25.9), sophomore
Ned Farrington (Cohasset, Mass.) in 36th place (26:30.3), and Mieszczanski in 37th place (26:31.8). Bates' displacers were sophomore
Colin Thoman (Westport, N.Y.) in 50th place (26:51.9) and sophomore
Victor Kering (Eldoret, Kenya) in 53rd place (26:53.5).
Bates finished among the top half the conference's 11 teams for the fourth consecutive NESCAC Championship meet, dating to 2017.
The Bobcats will next compete in the NCAA East Region Championships, held Saturday Nov. 13 at Franklin Park in Boston, with the men's race beginning at 11am followed by the women's race at noon.
