From Case Western Reserve University Athletics
Case Western Reserve University senior Sam Merriman led the 35th-ranked Spartans to a third-place finish, placing second overall at the Yellowjacket Invitational in Rochester, New York on Saturday afternoon.
The Spartans placed all five of their scoring runners in the top-25 of the 8,000-meter race at the Yellowjacket Invitational, finishing with a score of 77 points to place third. RIT won the race with a score of 53 points, followed by Geneseo in second place with 72 points.
Merriman led CWRU runners from the start on Saturday, pacing all runners through the first 2,000 meters of the race. After slipping back to third by the 4,000-meter mark, he moved up to second after 6,000-meters, where he would end up placing by the finish of the 8,000-meter course with a time of 26:00.3. RIT's Otto Kingstedt won the 209-participant race with a time of 25:38.6.
Senior Aidan DeSanto was the team's second finisher, placing 14th overall with a time of 26:50.1, with senior Zach Roshon following in 18th-place with a mark of 26:55.2, and sophomore David Hall breaking through for a 20th-place finish in a time of 26:56.5. Rounding out the Spartans' top-five scorers was senior Ben Whitman in 23rd-place with a time of 27:06.1. Freshman Dmytro Blundell (28th place, 27:13.7) and sophomore Andrew Green (36th-place, 27:22.3) completed CWRU's top-seven finishers on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Spartans also sent a contingent of runners to the Inter-Region Rumble in Oberlin, Ohio on Saturday, with the team finishing second out of 13 squads in the open race. Junior James De La Cruz led the squad, finishing fifth overall and first among runners representing a team, crossing the finish line with a time of 26:50.1.