Sophomore Dan Mazzocco didn't have to worry about a bad hair day on Saturday amidst the off-and-on rain, mostly because he didn't have any.

But that was by design.

Sporting a clean-shaven head, which he takes a razor to before every meet, Mazzocco sprinted past Susquehanna's Ryan Gleason down the stretch to win the Spiked Shoe meet by over 15 seconds. His time of 26:01.95 helped the Penn State men's cross country team to an easy victory on the Blue-White Course.

While athletes can get pretty exotic with pre-game rituals, Mazzocco keeps it fairly simple: he shaves his head.

"I think when I'm cutting the hair I'm focusing on the race," Mazzocco said.

Mazzocco seemed to have no problems focusing in this race, particularly down the stretch where he seemed to get stronger as the rest of the pack wilted a bit. The victory was made even sweeter by the fact this was his first race since an injury-filled season last year that forced him to take a medical redshirt.

While he admitted that it was hard to sit and watch his teammates last season, Mazzocco said with a smile that he was just happy to be back racing and even more excited for the team's success.

"I'm happy with [the win]," he said. "But I could have come in 20th place as long as the 19 guys in front of me were Penn State guys."

Penn State head coach Harry Groves echoed the thoughts of Mazzocco, saying that he was encouraged to see five Penn State runners among the top 10 finishers.

Among those were junior Chris Foster, who came in fourth (26:34.90), senior Chris Pruitt (26:49.42) and junior Joel Moceri (26:49.95) were seventh and eighth respectively, and sophomore Shawn Cavanaugh, (26:56.33) who rounded out the top 10.

With its strong effort, the Nittany Lions ended the meet with a total of 30 points, outdistancing Youngstown State (73), Duquesne (133) and Elizabethtown College (138).

"We were trying to get as many guys under 27 minutes as we could," Groves said. "The fact that it wasn't a good running day and people ran relatively fast is a good plus sign."

Despite the positives, Groves pointed out that the Lions must close the time gap between its fourth and fifth runners before the next meet in two weeks. Overall, however, Groves was excited about the meet, especially for Mazzocco.

"I think it was a big day for Mazzocco. He really needed that [after] he missed most of last year," Groves said.

As for Mazzocco's ritual, Groves said he did not particularly care for it, just because he doesn't believe in the power of rituals in general.

But after yesterday's meet, considering all Mazzocco had gone through, Groves said he might have to change his opinion.

"I mentioned if Mazzocco wins I'll have to get religion," Groves said. "He won the race so I told him I'll go to church one time."