Needing a top-two finish in Saturday's NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional meet to advance to the national championships, the Penn State men's cross country team had to rely on a great race from its first to its last finisher.
Like most of the season, however, the top three finishers for the Nittany Lions excelled, but the fourth and fifth runners didn't rise to the occasion. The Lions, who hosted the 10-kilometer race on the Penn State Golf Courses, finished seventh in a 23-team field, picking up 204 points.
Georgetown University, the Big East runner-up, took the regional championship, scoring a meet-best 49 points and placing all five of their scorers in the top-25 overall.
Senior Rob Koborsi captured first place, finishing the race with a time of 30:24, earning him the region's individual championship. The Hoyas also had the second-place finisher -- junior Chris Lukezic (30:31).
Redshirt sophomore Dan Mazzocco, the Mid-Atlantic Region's defending champion, led the way for the Lions, finishing fifth with a time of 30:36. His finish qualifies him for his second straight appearance in the NCAA championships in Terre Haute, Ind.
"I feel like I'm ready to go," Mazzocco said. "I probably could've caught a few more guys, so I know I have room to go. It wasn't my day to win today, but I feel I ran the best race I could."
Seniors Joel Moceri and Chris Foster came in second and third for the Lions, and both cracked the top 25, finishing at No. 16 and 20, respectively. The two seniors ran their final races on the Penn State Golf Courses, turning in great performances.
"We just didn't have a tail end of a team," Penn State coach Harry Groves said. "We had the top three guys all under 20, and that's pretty potent in a regional championship."
Groves explained that while his top three runners finished within 37 seconds of each other, the gap between the fourth Penn State runner who finished was well over a minute.
The distance between the late finishers really affected the score for the Lions, giving them their seventh-best 204 points.
However the fourth- and fifth-place finishers for the Lions, Oskar Nordenbring and Edward Quinn, are both freshman, and "distance running is a developmental sport," Groves said.
"If you take the top three, from where they were as freshman, except Mazzocco, they're about the same," Groves said.
"It just takes time to happen. It's unusual to get five or six guys at the same time to develop that way."
The young runners will have to take the next step in their development to step up for Moceri and Foster.
"I think you'll see our future here," Mazzocco said of the youthful depth of the team. "We have a lot of freshmen, who are really pretty good -- but freshman year is really tough. I think they ran they best race they could [Saturday]."
The Lions, with the exception of Mazzocco, will travel to the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A) Championships in Van Cortland, N.Y., next Saturday. The Lions placed third at the IC4A meet last season, yet the comparison Groves gave of this meet being like the NIT in basketball holds true. It just isn't the Big Dance.
