Men's XC Back in Action

West Point, N.Y. – The Army West Point men's cross country team will be put to the test against ranked opponents at the Iona "Paddy Doyle" Meet of Champions on Friday.
The meet takes place at Van Cordtlandt Park in New York, N.Y., which is the host course for the 2016 NCAA Northeast Regional meet.

"Our men are looking forward to opportunity to compete against high caliber opponents like Iona, Columbia and the other schools in the field," commented head coach Mike Smith. "Columbia won the Ivy League last year and Iona is a nationally ranked cross country powerhouse every year. This is a good test to measure ourselves against those teams that are ranked higher than us and have historically had great programs. We need to be better than we were two weeks ago. I have seen a lot of improvements in practice, now we need to see it on the race course."

Iona "Paddy Doyle" Meet of Champions
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Length: 8,000 Meters
Top Finisher from the last Meet of Champions: Trevor LaFontaine (11), 26:01.56
Twitter: @ArmyWP_TrackXC / @IonaXCTF
Results: TFRRS.org
Teams (13): Albany, Army, Columbia, Central Connecticut State, Fairfield, Manhattan, Quinnipiac, Shawnee State, St. Peters, Essex CC, Bergen CC, Towson, Iona.
Rankings: The field includes nationally ranked Iona (12), as well as regionally ranked Columbia (4) and Army (11).
Army Runners (results from last meet): Jacob Fong (2 - 25:50.16), Mikey Singer (3 – 25:54.48), Robbie Santoyo (4 – 25:56.09), Johnny Valeri (5 – 25:57.10), Ben Petrella (6 – 25:57.14), Matt Bearden (10 – 26:16.51), Roman Ollar (11 – 26:17.67)

"I expect that some of our young guys will be up there with our upperclassmen," added Smith. "We have some freshmen that are coming along, and I'm looking forward to seeing if they look as good on the race course as they do in practice. Mixing them in with the upperclassmen we have, I expect we will be led by some of the guys that led us at Maine. But, it is really hard to tell because we have such a big group that is all running together at this point.

UP NEXT:

Army will travel to Bethlehem, Pa., for the Paul Short Invitational hosted by Lehigh on Oct. 1.

For more information on Army West Point men's cross country, visit GoArmyWestPoint.com and follow @ArmyWP_TrackXC on Twitter.

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Matt Bearden

Jacob Fong

Roman Ollar

Ben Petrella

Robbie Santoyo

Mikey Singer

John Valeri

Army West Point Athletics