Like many of its races this season, the Penn State men's cross country team came into this weekend with big goals and once again left in disappointment.

The Nittany Lions closed the book on the 2005 season on Saturday with a 12th-place finish at the ICAAAA Championships at Van Courtland Park in Bronx, N.Y.

Penn State was faced with the burden of competing without its top ruuner, Dan Mazzocco, who will be competing in NCAA Championships today in Indiana, but senior Chris Nirschel stepped up and led the Lions with a 32nd-place finish with a time of 25:52.8.

Sophomores Oskar Nordenbring and Michael Syrnick were the Lions' next highest finishers, coming in 47th and 66th, respectively. Penn State finished in fourth place at IC4As last year, but this time the Lions were up against many strong teams from around the country.

"I think we were all disappointed in our individual performances, which combine for the total team score," Nirschel said. "There was definitely an increased level of competition here this year, though."

Duke took the overall team title and was followed by strong collective performances from Cornell and Notre Dame. The Lions had hoped that the fact that many teams' top runners would be competing at the NCAA Championships in Indiana would give them an opportunity to surprise some teams.

"Going into it, we thought we'd be a team that could compete to win," Penn State assistant coach Artie Gilkes said. "We thought we had some of the best guys but it never materialized."

The course at Van Courtland Park gave the team some trouble, though, and they were unable maintain the pre-race strategy they had devised once the course went into the woods.

"We attempted to stay grouped together for the first one or two miles," Nirschel said. "We were able to stay together the first mile but the way it played out, we went into the woods and the paths got more narrow. We lost one another and we couldn't move up on runners because there were so many of them."

Gilkes said although the team struggled stay together, all of the runners finished up strong once the course opened up at the end.

"All of our guys passed several runners in the late stages of the race," Gilkes said. "Everyone definitely finished hard."

While the team would have benefited from the presence of Mazzocco, Nirschel said that his absence didn't hurt the team.

"It did affect us because he would've helped out our score if he had been there," Nirschel said. "But I don't think him not being there had a negative effect."

The race concluded a disappointing second half of the season for the Lions. Penn State won its first two races of the season, but as the competition got fiercer, the Lions were unable to keep up the same level as its opponents.

The team finished the season with a ninth-place finish at the Big Ten Championships and an eighth place at the Mid-Atlantic Regionals.

The Lions could have come in to the IC4As downtrodden and unmotivated, but Nirschel said they came into the race with a positive attitude.

With the cross country season ended, the team is looking to take its positive outlook to the indoor season.

"We're all looking forward to competing in the indoor races," Nirschel said.