It's been a goal for the Penn State women's cross country team to stick close together and finish.
That happened this weekend at the Paul Short Run, but unfortunately for the Lions, it happened back in the pack.
Freshman Janelle Young placed 73rd with a time of 22:01 at the invitational at Lehigh University on Saturday. She led Penn State to a 23rd place finish and was the only Penn State runner to place in the top 75.
Penn State posted a score of 641 at its first major competition. Columbia University took first place with a score of 121 with five runners finishing in the top 50.
Altogether, there were more than 300 runners in the 47-team field, a huge number of competitors compared to what the team is used to.
Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said that 10 nationally ranked teams competed at the meet and it would have been difficult to crack even the top 15.
This was some of the toughest competition yet faced by the Nittany Lions this season. The days of "getting their feet wet" are over.
"Overall it was not a very good day for us. It was one of those weekends where we underperformed," Alford-Sullivan said.
Sophomore Sonja Hinish was the next Penn State runner to cross the line in 22:20 placing 105th.
"We had two really good races out of Janelle Young and Sonja Hinish, both running their best times in cross country thus far," Alford-Sullivan said.
Sophomore Nicki Bohnsack finished with a time of 22:30 to take 123rd place. Crossing the line at 22:52, freshmen Molly Ritter finished in 155th place, while her classmate Claire Percival finished at 23:07 to gain 185th place.
Alford-Sullivan and her team have talked in the past about the importance of closing the time gaps between runners. The time spread on Saturday between the top five Lion scorers was only 1:06. The close finishing times are something the team is glad to see.
"We're mostly a young team. We just wanted to see what we could do," Young said. "I just wanted to go out hard. I knew it would be a big race. You just needed to keep on moving up and keep on passing people."
